§ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. § 



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LEAVES FEOM AUSTRALIAN EOEESTS. 



LEAVES EEOM 



ATJSTEALIAJf FOEESTS. 



HENRY KENDALL. 



MELBOTJENE: 
GEORGE ROBERTSON, 69 ELIZABETH STREET, 

MDCCCLXS, 



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MELROLRNE I 

WALKER, MAY AND CO., PRINTERS, 

99 BOCRKE STREET WEST. 



DEDICATION. 



5j»;< 



To her, who, cast with me in trying days, 

Stood in the place of health, and power, and praise ;- 

Who, when I thought all light was out, became 

A lamp of hope that put my fears to shame ; — 

Who faced for love's sole sake the life austere 

That waits upon the man of letters here ; — 

Who, unawares, her deep affection showed, 

By many a touching little wifely mode ; — 

Whose spirit self-denying, dear, divine. 

Its sorrows hid, so it might lessen mine, — 

To her, my bright best friend, I dedicate 

This book of songs. 'Twill help to compensate 

Eor much neglect. The act, if not the rhyme, 

Will touch her heart and lead her to the time 

Of trials past. That which is most intense 

Within these leaves is of her influence ; 

And if aught here is sweetened with a tone 

Sincere, like love, it came of love alone. 



CONTENTS. 



PAOE 

PREFATORY SONNETS 1 

THE HUT BY THE BLACK SWAMP . , 3 

SEPTEMBER IN AUSTRALIA 7 

GHOST GLEN 10 

DAPHNE . . . . . . . . 13 

THE WARRIGAL 16 

EUROCLYDON 19 

ARALUEN . . . . . . . . 24 

AT EUROMA . . . . 28 

ILLA GREEK . . . . . . 30 

MOSS ON A WALL 33 

CAMPASPE . . . . 36 

ON A CATTLE TRACK 39 

TO DAMASCUS 42 

BELL BIRDS 45 

A DEATH IN THE BUSH . . . . . . . . . . 48 

A SPANISH LOVE SONG 58 

THE LAST OF HIS TRIBE 60 

ARAKOON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 

THE VOYAGE OF TELEGONUS 65 



VUl 



CONTENTS. 



SITTING BY THE FIRE 








74 


CLEONE 


. 






76 


CHARLES HARPUR 


. 






78 


GOD HELP OUR MEN AT SEA 


. 






81 


COOGEE 








83 


OGYGES 








87 


BY THE SEA 








92 


SONG OP THE CATTLE HUNTERS 








93 


KING SAUL AT GILBOA 








95 


IN THE VALLEY 








. 101 


TWELVE SONNETS 








. 103 


Sutherland's grave 








. 115 


SYRINX 








. 118 


ON THE PAROO 








121 


FAITH IN GOD 








. 125 


MOUNTAIN MOSS 








. 127 


THE GLEN OF ARRAWATTA . . 








130 


EUTERPE 








139 


ELLEN RAY 








. 143 


AT DUSK 








. 145 


SAFI 








. 148 


DANIEL HENRY DENIEHY 








153 


MEROPE 








. 156 


AFTER THE HUNT 








160 


ROSE LORRAINE 








. 161 



I PTJRPOSED once to take my pen and write 
Not songs like some tormented and awry 
"Witli Passion, but a cunning harmony 
Of words and music caught from glen and height, 
And lucid colours born of woodland light, 

And shining places where the sea-streams lie ; 
But this was when the heat of youth glowed white, 

And since I've put the faded purpose by. 
I have no faultless fruits to offer you 

"Who read this book ; but certain syllables 

Herein are borrowed from unfooted dells, 
And secret hollows dear to noontide dew ; 
And these at least, though far between and few, 

May catch the sense like subtle forest spells. 



II. 

So take ttese Idndlv, even though there be 
Some notes that unto other lyres belong : 
Stray echoes from the elder sons of Song ; 

And think how from its neighbouring, native sea 

The pensive shell doth borrow melody. 
I would not do the lordly masters wrong, 
By filching fair words from the shining throng 

"Whose music haunts me, as the wind a tree ! 
Lo, when a stranger, in soft Syrian glooms 

Shot through with sunset, treads the cedar dells, 

And hears the breezy ring of elfin bells 

Par down by where the white-haired cataract 
booms. 

He, faint with sweetness caught from forest smells. 
Bears thence, unwitting, plunder of perfumes. 



LEAYES FEOI AUSTRALIAN 
FORESTS. 



=>>0<c 



THE HUT BY THE BLACK SWAMP. 

T^ow comes the fierce North-Easter, bound 
About witb cloud and racks of rain ; 

And dry dead leaves go whirling round 
In rings of dust, and sigh like Pain 
Across the plain. 



Now Twilight, with a shadowy hand 
Of wild dominionship, doth keep 

Strong hold of hollow straits of land ; 
And watery sounds are loud and deep 
By gap and steep. 



THE HUT BY THE BLACK SWAMP. 

Keen fitful gusts that fly before 

The wings of Storm when Day hath shut 
Its eyes on mountains, flaw by flaw, 

Fleet down by whistling boxtree-but 
Against the Hut. 

And ringed and girt with lurid pomp 
Ear eastern cliff's start up and take 

Thick steaming vapours from a swamp 
That lieth like a great blind lake 
Of face opaque. 

The moss that like a tender grief 
About an English ruin clings — 

What time the wan autumnal leaf 
Faints after many wanderings 
On windy wings — 

That gracious growth whose quiet green 

Is as a love in days austere. 
Was never seen — hath never been 

On slab or roof, deserted here 
For many a year. 

Nor comes the bird whose speech is song — 
Whose soEgs are silvery syllables 

That unto glimmering woods belong, 
And deep meandering mountain-dells 
By yellow wells. 



THE HUT BY THE BLACK SWAMP. 

Eut rather here the wild dog halts, 

And lifts the paw, and looks, and howls ; 

And here, in ruined forest-vaults, 

Abide dim, dark, death-featured owls, 
Like monks in cowls. 

Across this Hut the nettle runs ; 

And livid adders make their lair 
In corners dank from lack of suns ; 

And out of fetid furrows stare 
The growths that scare. 

Here Summer's grasp of fire is laid 
On bark and slabs that rot and breed 

Squat ugly things of deadly shade — 
The scorpion, and the spiteful seed 
Of centipede. 

Unhallowed thunders harsh and dry, 
And flaming noontides mute with heat, 

Beneath the breathless, brazen sky, 
Upon these rifted rafters beat 
With torrid feet. 

And night by night, the fitful gale 
Doth carry past the bittern's boom, 

The dingo's yell, the plover's wail, 

While lumbering shadows start, and loom, 
And hiss through gloom. 



THE HUT BY THE BLACK SWAMP. 

No sign of grace — no hope of green, 
Cool-blossomed seasons marks the spot ; 

But, chained to iron doom, I ween, 
'Tis left, like skeleton, to rot 
Where ruth is not. 

For on this Hut hath Murder writ 
"With bloody fingers hellish things ; 

And Grod will never visit it 

With flower or leaf of sweet-faced Springs^ 
Or gentle wings. 



SEPTEMBEE IN AUSTEALIA. 

GrEET Winter bath gone, like a wearisome guest. 

And, behold, for repayment, 
September comes in with the wind of the West, 

And the Spring in her raiment ! 
The ways of the frost have been filled of the flowers 

While the forest discovers 
Wild wings with the halo of hyaline hours, 

And a music of lovers. 

September, the maid with the swift, silver feet ! 

She glides, and she graces 
The valleys of coolness, the slopes of the heat, 

With her blossomy traces. 
Sweet month with a mouth that is made of a rose, 

She lightens and lingers 
In spots where the harp of the evening glows. 

Attuned by her fingers. 



8 SEPTEMBER TS AUSTEALIA. 

The stream from its liorae in the hollow hill slips 

In a darling old fashion ; 
And the day goeth down with a song on its lips, 

Whose key-note is passion. 
Ear out in the fierce bitter front of the sea, 

I stand and remember 
Dead things that were brothers and sisters of thee, 

Eesplendent September. 

The "West, when it blows at the fall of the noon, 

And beats on the beaches, 
Is filled with a tender and tremulous tune 

That touches and teaches: 
The stories of Youth, of the burden of Time, 

And the death of Devotion, 
Come back with the wind, and are themes of the 
rhyme. 

In the waves of the ocean. 



We, having a secret to others unknown, 

In the cool mountain-mosses, 
May whisper together, September, alone 

Of our loves and our losses. 
One word for her beauty, and one for the grace 

She gave to the hours ; 
And then we may kiss her, and sufier her face 

To sleep with the flowers. 



SEPTEMBER IN AUSTEALIA. 

Higt places tliat knew of the gold and the white 

On the forehead of Morning, 
Now darken and quake, and the steps of the Night 

Are heavy with warning ! 
Her voice in the distance is lofty and loud, 

Through the echoing gorges ; 
She hath hidden her eyes in a mantle of cloud, 

And her feet in the surges ! 



On the tops of the hills ; on the turreted cones — 

Chief temples of thunder — 
The gale, like a ghost, in the middle watch moans. 

Gliding over and under. 
The sea, flying white through the rack and the rain, 

Leapetb wild at the forelands ; 
And the plover, whose cry is like passion with pain, 

Complains in the moorlands. 



O, season of changes — of shadow and shine — 

September the splendid ! 
My song hath no music to mingle with thine, 

And its burden is ended : 
But thou, being born of the winds and the sun, 

By mountain, by river. 
May lighten and listen, and loiter and run. 

With thy voices for ever. 



GHOST GLEN. 

** Shut your ears, stranger, or, turn from Grliost Glen 

now, 
Por the paths are grown over; untrodden by men 

now — 
Shut your ears, stranger!" saith the grey mother, 

crooning 
Her sorcery Eunic, when sets the half moon in ! 

To-night the North-Easter goes travelling slowly, 
Eut it never stoops down to that Hollow unholy — 
To-night it rolls loud on the ridges red-litten, 
But it cannot abide in that Eorest sin- smitten ! 

Eor over the pitfall the moondew is thawing, 
And, with never a body, two shadows stand sawing T 
The wraiths of two sawyers (step under and under), 
Who did a foul murder, and were blackened with 
thunder ! 



GHOST GLEN. 11 

Whenever the storm-wind comes driven and driving, 
Through the blood-spattered timber you may see the 

saw striving — 
You may see the saw heaving, and falling, and heaving, 
Whenever the sea-creek is chafing and grieving ! 

And across a burnt body, as black as an adder. 
Sits the sprite of a sheep-dog ! — was ever sight sadder I 
For as the dry thunder splits louder and faster, 
This sprite of a sheep-dog howls for his master ! 

" Oh! count your beads deftly," saith the grey mother, 

crooning 
Her sorcery Eunic, when sets the half moon in ! 
And well may she mutter, for the dark hollow laughter 
Tou will hear in the sawpits, and the bloody logs after f. 

Ay, count your beads deftly, and keep your ways wary, 
For the sake of the Saviour and sweet Mother Mary l" 
Pray for your peace in these perilous places. 
And pray for the laying of horrible faces ! 

One starts with a forehead wrinkled and livid, 

Aghast at the lightnings sudden and vivid ! 

One telleth with curses the gold that they drew 

there 
(Ah! cross your breast humbly) from him whom 

they slew there ! 



12 GHOST GLEN. 

The stranger wlio came from the loved — the 

romantic 
Island that sleeps on the moaning Atlantic ; 
Leaving behind him a patient home yearning 
Tor the steps in the distance, never returning ; — 

"Who was left in the Forest, shrunken, and starkly 
Eurnt by his slayers (so men have said darkly) : 
"With the half-crazy sheep-dog, who cowered beside 

there 
And yelled at the silence, and marvelled, and died 

there ! 

Tea, cross your breast humbly, and hold your breath 

tightly, 
Or fly for your life from those shadows unsightly ; 
From the set staring features (cold, and so young 

too!) 
And the death on the lips that a mother hath clung to. 

I tell you, the Bushman is braver than most men, 
Who even in daylight doth go through the Ghost Grlen! 
Although in that Hollow, unholy and lonely, 
He sees the dank sawpits and bloody logs only ! 



DAPHNE. 

DAPH]!fE ! Ladon's daughter, Daphne ! Set thyself in 
silver light, 

Take thy thoughts of fairest texture, weave them into 
words of white — 

Weave the rhyme of rose-lipped Daphne, nymph of 
wooded stream and shade, 

Plying love of bright Apollo, — fleeting type of fault- 
less maid ! 

She, when followed from the forelands by the lord of 
lyre and lute, 

Sped towards far-singing waters, past deep gardens 
flushed with fruit ; 

Took the path against Peneus, panted by its yellow 
banks ; 

Turned, and looked, and flew the faster through grey- 
tufted thicket ranks ; 

Flashed amongst high flowered sedges : leaped across 
the brook, and ran 

Down to where the fourfold shadows of a nether 
glade began ; 



14 DAPHNE. 

There she dropped, like falling Hesper, heavy hair of 

radiant head 
Hiding all the young abundance of her beauty's 

white and red. 



Came the yellow-tressed Far-darter — came the god 

whose feet are tire, 
On his lips the name of Daphne, in his eyes a great 

desire ; 
Fond, full lips of lord and lover, sad because of suit 

denied ; 
Clear, grey eyes made keen by passion, panting, 

pained, unsatisfied. 
Here he turned, and there he halted, now he paused, 

and now he flew. 
Swifter than his sister's arrows, through soft dells of 

dreamy dew. 
Yext with gleams of Ladon's daughter, dashed along 

the son of Jove, 
Fast upon flower-trammelled Daphne fleeting on from 

grove to grove ; 
Flights of seawind hard behind him, breaths of bleak 

and whistling straits ; 
Drifts of driving cloud above him, like a troop of 

fierce-eyed fates ! 
So he reached the water-shallows ; then he stayed his 

steps, and heard 



DAPHNE. 15 

Daphne drop upon the grasses, fluttering like a 
wounded bird. 



Was there help for Ladon's daughter ? Saturn's son 

is high and just: 
Did he come between her beauty and the fierce Par- 
darter's lust ? 
As she lay, the helpless maiden, caught and bound in 

fast eclipse, 
Did the lips of god drain pleasure from her sweet and 

swooning lips ? 
Now that these and all Love's treasures blushed, 

before the spoiler, bare, 
Was the wrong that shall be nameless done, and seen, 

and suffered there ? 
No ! for Zeus is King and Father. Weary nymph 

and fiery god, 
Bend the knee alike before him — he is kind, and he 

is lord ! 
Therefore sing how clear-browed Pallas — Pallas, friend 

of prayerful maid. 
Lifted dazzling Daphne lightly, bore her down the 

breathless glade. 
Did the thing that Zeus commanded : so it came to 

pass that he 
Who had chased a white-armed virgin, caught at her, 

and clasped a tree. 






THE WAEEiaAL.* 

Theotjgh forest boles tte stormwind rolls, 

Yext of the sea-driven rain, 
And up in the clift, through many a rift, 

The voices of torrents complain. 
The sad marsh-fowl and the lonely owl 

Are heard in the fog-wreaths grey, 
"When the "Warrigal wakes, and listens, and takes 

To the woods that shelter the prey. 



In the gully-deeps, the blind creek sleeps ; 

And the silver, showery, moon 
Glides over the hills, and floats, and fills, 

And dreams in the dark lagoon ; 
While halting hard by the station yard, 

Aghast at the hut-flame nigh. 
The Warrigal yells, and the flats and fells 

Are loud with his dismal cry. 

* The Wild Dog. 



THE WAEEIGAL. 17 

On t"he topmost peak of mountains bleak, 

The south wind sobs, and strays 
Through moaning pine, and turpentine, 

And the rippling runnel ways ; 
And strong streams flow, and great mists go, 

Where the Warrigal starts to hear 
The watch-dog's bark break sharp in the dark, 

And flees like a phantom of Fear ! 



The swift rains beat, and the thunders fleet 

On the wings of the fiery gale. 
And down in the glen of pool and fen, 

The wild gums whistle and wail, 
As over the plains, and past the chains 

Of waterholes glimmering deep. 
The Warrigal flies from the Shepherd's cries. 

And the clamour of dogs and sheep. 



The "Warrigal's lair is pent in bare 

Black rocks at the gorge's mouth : 
It is set in ways where Summer strays 

"With the sprites of flame and drouth ; 
But when the heights are touched with lights 

Of hoarfrost, sleet, and shine, 
His bed is made of the dead grass-blade 

And the leaves of the windy pine. 



18 THE WAEEIGAL. 

He roves througli the lands of sultry sands, 

He hunts in the iron range, 
Untamed as surge of the far sea verge, 

And fierce and fickle and strange. 
The v^hite man's track and the haunts of the black 

He shuns, and shudders to see ; 
Por his joy he tastes in lonely wastes 

Where his mates are torrent and tree. 



EUEOCLYDON. 

On the storm -cloven Cape 
The bitter waves roll 
With the bergs of the Pole, 
And the darks and the damps of the Northern Sea 
For the storm-cloven Cape 
Is an alien Shape 
With a fearful face ; and it moans, and it stands 
Outside all lands 
Everlastingly ! 



When the fruits of the year 

Have been gathered in Spain ; 
And the Indian rain 
Is rich on the evergreen lands of the Sun ; 



20 ETJEOCLTDOIf. 

There comes to this Cape — 
To this alien Shape, 
As the waters beat in and the echoes troop forth^ 
The Wind of the North, 
Euroclydon ! 



And the wilted thyme, 
And the patches past 
Of the nettles cast 
In the drift of the rift, and the broken rime, 
Are tumbled and blown 
To every zone 
With the famished glede, and the plovers thinned 
By this fourfold Wind — 
This Wind sublime ! 



On the wrinkled hills 
By starts and fits 
The wild Moon sits ; 
And the rindles fill, and flash, and fall 
In the way of her light. 
Through the straitened night, 
When the sea-heralds clamour, and elves of the war 
In the torrents afar, 
Hold festival ! 



ETJEOCLTDON. 21 

From ridge to ridge ' 

The polar fires 
On the naked spires 
^ith a foreign splendour, flit and flow ; 
And clough and cave* 
And architrave, 
Have a blood-coloured glamour on roof and on wall, 
Like a nether hall 
In the hells below ! 



The dead dry lips 

Of the ledges, split 
By the thunder fit 
And the stress of the sprites of the forked flame, 
Anon break out 
"With a shriek and a shout. 
Like a hard bitter laughter cracked and thin 
Prom a ghost with a]sin 
Too dark for a name ! 



And, all thro' the year, 
The fierce seas run 
Prom sun to sun. 
Across the face of a vacant world ! 



22 ETJEOCLTDOJf. 

And tlie Wind flies fortli 
From the wild white North, 
That shivers and harries the heart of things, 
And shapes with its wings 
A Chaos uphurled ! 



Like one who sees 
A rebel light 
In the thick of the night, 
As he stumbles and staggers on summits afar — 
TVho looks to it still, 
Up hill and hill, 
With a steadfast hope (though the ways be deep^ 
And rough, and steep), 
Like a steadfast star ; 



So I, that stand 

On the outermost peaks 
Of peril, with cheeks 
Blue with the salts of a frosty Sea, 
Have learnt to wait 
With an eye elate 
And a heart intent, for the fuller blaze 
Of the Beauty that rays 
Like a glimpse for me- 



EUKOCLTDON. 23 

Of the Beauty that grows 
Whenever I hear 
The Winds of Fear 
From the tops and the bases of barrenness call : 
And the duplicate lore 
Which I learn evermore, 
Is of Harmony filling and rounding the Storm> 
And the marvellous Form 
That governs all ! 



AEALUEN. 

EiTEB, myrtle-rimmed, and set 
Deep amongst unfooted dells — 

Daughter of grey hills of wet, 
Born by mossed and yellow wells- 



Now that soft September lays 
Tender hands on thee and thine, 

Let me think of blue-eyed days, 

Star-like flowers, and leaves of shine ! 



Cities soil the life with rust : 

Water-banks are cool and sweet : 

Kiver, tired of noise and dust 
Here I come to rest mv feet. 



AEALTJEN. 25 



Now the month from shade to sun 
Fleets and sings supremest songs, 

Now the wilful woodwinds run 

Through the tangled cedar throngs. 



Here are cushioned tufts and turns 
Where the sumptuous noontide lies. 

Here are seen by flags and ferns 
Summer's large luxurious eyes. 



On this spot wan Winter casts 
Eyes of ruth, and spares its green 

Prom his bitter searuursed blasts, 
Spears of rain and hailstones keen. 



Eather here abideth Spring, 

Lady of a lovely land, 
Dear to leaf and fluttering wing, 

Deep in blooms — by breezes fanned. 



Paithful friend beyond the main — 

Friend that Time nor Change makes cold- 

Now, like ghosts, return again 
Pallid perished days of old. 



26 AEALUEN. 

Ah, the days — the old, old theme 
Never stale, but never new, 

Floating, like a pleasant dream, 
Back to me and back to you. 



Since v^e rested on these slopes. 
Seasons fierce have beaten down 

Ardent loves and blossoming hopes — 
Loves that lift, and hopes that crown. 



But, believe me, still mine eyes 
Often fill with light that springs 

From divinity, which lies 
Ever at the heart of things. 



Solace do I sometimes find 

Where you used to hear with me 
Songs of stream and forest- wind, 

Tones of wave and harp-like tree. 



Araluen ! home of dreams ! 

Fairer for its flowerful glade 
Than the face of Persian streams, 

Or the slopes of Syrian shade. 



AEALTJEN. 2T 

Why should I still love it so ? 

Friend and brother far awaj. 
Ask the winds that come and go, 

What hath brought me here to-day. 



Evermore of you I think, 
When the leaves begin to fall. 

Where our river breaks its brink,. 
And a rest is over all. 



Evermore in quiet lands, 

Eriend of mine beyond the sea^ 
Memory comes with cunning hands. 
Stays, and paints your face for m©^ 



AT EUROMA. 

Thet built his mound of the rough red ground, 

By the dip of a desert dell, 
Where all things sweet are killed by the heat, 

And scattered o'er flat and fell. 
In a burning zone they left hira alone, 

Past the uttermost western plain ; 
And the nightfall dim heard his funeral hymn 

In the voices of wind and rain. 



The songs austere of the forests drear, 

And the echoes of clift and cave, 
When the dark is keen where the storm hath been, 

Fleet over the far-away grave. 
And through the days when the torrid rays 

Strike down on a coppery gloom, 
Some spirit grieves in the perished leaves 

Whose theme is that desolate tomb. 



AT EUEOMA. 2^ 

No human foot, or paw of brute, 

Halts now where the stranger sleeps ; 
But cloud and star his fellows are, 

And the rain that sobs and weeps. 
The dingo yells by the far iron fells, 

The plover is loud in the range, 
But they never come near to the slumberer here. 

Whose rest is a rest without change. 

Ah ! in his life, had he mother or wife. 

To wait for his step on the floor ? 
Did Beauty wax dim while watching for him 

Who passed through the threshold no more ? 
Doth it trouble his head ? He is one with the dead ; 

He lies by the alien streams ; 
And sweeter than sleep is death that is deep 

And unvexed by the lordship of dreams. 



T 



i 



ILLA CEEEK. 

A STEONG sea- wind flies up and sings 
Across the blown-wet border, 

Whose stormy echo runs and rings 
Like bells in wild disorder. 



Fierce breath hath vext the foreland's face, 
It glistens, glooms, and glistens ; 

But deep within this quiet place 
Sweet Ilia lies and listens. 



Sweet Ilia of the shining sands, 

She sleeps in shady hollows 
Where August flits with flowerful hands 

And silver Summer follows. 



ILLA CEEEK, 31 



Par up the naked hills is heard 
A noise of many waters ; 

But green-haired Ilia lies unstirred 
Amongst her star-like daughters. 



The tempest pent in rcoaning ways 
Awakes the shepherd yonder ; 

But Ilia dreams, unknown to days 
Whose wings are wind and thunder. 



Here fairy hands and floral feet 
Are brought by bright October ; 

Here stained with grapes, and smit with heat, 
Comes Autumn sweet and sober. 



Here lovers rest, what time the red 
And yellow colours mingle, 

And Daylight droops with dying head 
Beyond the western dingle. 



And here, from month to month, the time 
Is kissed by Peace and Pleasure, 

"While ICature sings her woodland rhyme 
And hoards her woodland treasure. 



32 ILLA CEEEK. 

Ah, Ula Creek ! ere Evening spreads 
Her wings o'er towns unshaded, 

How oft we seek thy mossy beds 
To lave our foreheads faded ! 

Por, let me whisper, then we find 
The strength that lives, nor falters. 

In wood and water, waste and wind, 
And hidden mountain altars. 



MOSS ON A WALL. 

Dim dreams it hath of singing ways, 
Of far-off woodland water-heads, 

And shining ends of April days 
Amongst the yellow runnel beds. 



Stoop closer to the ruined wall, 
Wherein the wilful wilding sleeps, 

As if its home were waterfall 

By dripping clefts and shadowy steeps I 



A little waif, whose beauty takes 
A touching tone, because it dwells 

So far away from mountain lakes. 
And lily leaves^ and lightening fells. 



34r MOSS ON A WALL. 

Deep hidden in delicious floss 

It nestles, sister, from the heat : 
A gracious growth of tender moss. 

Whose nights are soft, whose days are sweet. 



Swift gleams across its petals run, 

"With winds that hum a pleasant tune : 

Serene surprises of the sun, 
And whispers from the lips of Noon. 



The evening-coloured apple-trees 
Are faint with July's frosty breath ; 

But lo, this stranger getteth ease 

And shines amidst the strays of Death! 



And at the turning of the year, 
"When August wanders in the cold, 

The raiment of the nursling here 

Is rich with green and glad with gold. 



O, friend of mine, to one whose eyes 
Are vext because of alien things, 

For ever in the wall moss lies 

The peace of hills and hidden springs. 



MOSS ON A WALL. 35 

Erom faithless lips and fickle lights 

The tired pilgrim sets his face, 
And thinketh here of sounds and sights 

In many a lovely forest-place. 



And when by sudden fits and starts 
The sunset on the moss doth burn, 

He often dreams, and lo, the marts 
And streets are changed to dells of fern ! 



For, let me say, the wilding placed 

By hands unseen amongst these stones, 

Eestores a Past by Time eff'aced. 
Lost loves and long-forgotten tones ! 



As sometimes songs and scenes of old 
Come faintly unto you and me, 

When winds are wailing in the cold. 
And rains are sobbing on the sea. 



CAMPASPE. 

Turn from the ways of this Woman ! Campaspe we 

call her by name — 
She is fairer than flowers of the fire — she is brighter 

than brightness of flame. 
As a song that strikes swift to the heart with the 

beat of the blood of the South, 
And a light and a leap and a smart, is the play of her 

perilous mouth. 
Her eyes are as splendours that break in the rain at 

the set of the sun, 
But turn from the steps of Campaspe — a Woman to 

look at and shun ! 

Dost thou know of the cunning of Beauty? take 

heed to thyself and beware 
Of the trap in the droop in the raiment — the snare 

in the folds of the hair ! 



CAMPASPE. 37 

She is fulgent in flashes of pearl, the breeze with her 

breathing is sweet, 
But fly from the face of the girl — there is death in 

the fall of her feet ! 
Is she maiden or marvel of marble? O rather a 

tigress at wait 
To pounce on thy soul for her pastime — a leopard for 

love or for hate. 



Woman of shadow and furnace ! she biteth her lips 

to restrain 
Speech that springs out when she sleepeth, by the 

stirs and the starts of her pain. 
As music half-shapen of sorrovr, with its wants and 

its infinite wail. 
Is the voice of Campaspe, the beauty at bay with her 

passion dead-pale. 
•Go out from the courts of her loving, nor tempt the 

fierce dance of desire 
Where thy life would be shrivelled like stubble in 

the stress and the fervour of fire ! 



I know of one, gentle as moonlight — she is sad as 

the shine of the moon, 
But touching the ways of her eyes are : she comes 

to my soul like a tune — 



So CAMPASPE. 

Like a tune that is filled with faint voices of the 

loved and the lost and the lone, 
Doth this stranger abide with my silence : like a 

tune with a tremulous tone. 
The leopard, we call her, Campaspe! I pluck at a 

rose and I stir 
To think of this sweet-hearted maiden — what name 

is too tender for her ? 



ON A CATTLE TEACK. 

Wheee the strengtli of dry thunder splits hill-rocks 
asunder, 

And the shouts of the desert-wind break, 
By the gullies of deepness, and ridges of steepness, 

Lo, the cattle-track twists like a snake ! 
Like a sea of dead embers burnt white by Decembers, 

A plain to the left of it lies ; 
And six fleeting horses dash down the creek-courses, 

With the terror of thirst in their eyes. 

The false strength of fever, that deadly deceiver, 

Gives foot to each famishing beast ; 
And over lands rotten, by rain-winds forgotten. 

The mirage gleams out in the east. 
Ah ! the waters are hidden, from riders and ridden, 

In a stream where the cattle-track dips ; 
And Death on their faces is scoring fierce traces. 

And the drouth is a fire on their lips. 



40 ON A CATTLE TRACK. 

It is far to the Station, and gaunt Desolation 

Is a spectre that glooms in the way ; 
Like a red smoke the air is, like a hell-light its glare is, 

And as flame are the feet of the day. 
The wastes are like metal that forges unsettle 

"When the heat of the furnace is white ; 
And the cool breeze that bloweth when an English 
sun goeth. 

Is unknown to the wild Desert Night. 

A cry of distress there ! a horseman the less there ! 

The mock- waters shine like a moon ! 
It is "speed, and speed faster from this hole of 
disaster, 

" And hurrah for yon Grod-sent lagoon." 
Doth a devil deceive them ? Ah, now let us leave 
them. 

We are burdened in life with the sad ; 
Our portion is trouble, our joy is a bubble ; 

And the gladdest is never too glad. 



From the pale tracts of peril, past mountain heads 
sterile. 
To a sweet river shadowed with reeds 
Where Summer steps lightly, and Winter beams 
brightly. 
The hoof-rutted cattle-track leads. 



ON A CATTLE TRACK. 41 

There soft is the moonlight, and tender the noonlight ; 

There fiery things falter and fall ; 
And there, may be seen, now, the gold and the green, 
now, 

And the wings of a peace over all. 

Hush, hittern and plover ! Gro, wind, to thy cover 

Away by the snow- smitten Pole ! 
The rotten leaf falleth, the forest rain calleth ; 

And what is the end of the whole ? 
Some men are successful after seasons distressful, 

[Now, masters, the drift of my tale] 
But the brink of salvation is a lair of damnation 

For others who struggle, yet fail. 



TO DAMASCUS. 

"Wheee the sinister sun of the Syrians beat 

On the brittle bright stubble, 
And the camels fell back from the swords of the heat. 
Came Saul with a fire in the soles of his feet, 

And a forehead of trouble. 



And terrified faces to left and to right, 

Before and behind him, 
Fled away with the speed of a maddening fright, 
To the doughs of the bat, and the chasms of night. 
Each hoping the zealot would fail in his flight 

To find him and bind him. 



TO DAMASCUS. 43^ 

For, behold you, the strong man of Tarsus came^ 
down 
With breathings of slaughter, 
From the priests of the city, the chiefs of the town, 
(The lords with the sword, and the sires with the- 

gown), 
To harry the Christians, and trample, and drown, 
And waste them like water. 

He was ever a fighter, this son of the Jews — 

A fighter in earnest ; 
And the Lord took delight in the strength of hisr 

thews, 
For He knew he was one of the few He could choose 
To fight out His battles, and carry His news 
Of a marvellous Truth through the dark, and the- 
dews. 
And the desert-lands furnaced ! 



He knew he was one of the few He could take 

For His Mission supernal ; 
Whose feet would not falter, whose limbs would not 

ache. 
Through the waterless lands of the thorn and the- 

snake. 
And the ways of the wild — bearing up for the sake 
Of a Beauty eternal. 



44 TO DAMASCUS. 

And therefore tlie road to Damascus was burned 

"With a swift, sudden brightness ; 
While Saul, with his face in the bitter dust, learned 
Of the sin which he did, ere he tumbled, and turned 

Aghast at Grod's whiteness ! 

Of the sin which he did, ere he covered his head 

From the strange revelation. 
But, thereafter, jou know of the life that he led ; 
How he preached to the peoples, and suffered, and sped 
AA^ith the wonderful words which his Master had f*aid, 

From nation to nation. 



Now would we be like him, who suffer and see, 

K the Chooser should choose us ! 
For I tell you, brave brothers, whoever you be, 
It is right, till all learn to look further, and see, 

That our Master should use us ! 

It is right, till all learn to discover and class, 

That our Master should task us : 
For now we may judge of the Truth through a glass ; 
And the road over wliich they must evermore pass, 
Who would think for the many, and fight for the 
mass, 

Is the road to Damascus. 



BELL BIEDS. 

By channels of coolness the echoes are calling, 
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling : 
It lives in the mountain where moss and the sedges 
Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges. 
Through breaks of the cedar and sycamore bowers 
Struggles the light that is love to the flowers ; 
And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singings 
The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing. 



The silver-voiced bell-birds, the darlings of daytime ! 
They sing in September their songs of the May-time j 
When shadows wax strong, and the thunder-bolts 

hurtle. 
They hide with their fear in the leaves of the myrtle ; 



46 BELL BIEDS. 

"When rain and the sunbeams shine mingled together, 
"They start up like fairies that follow fair weather ; 
And straightway the hues of their feathers unfolden 
Are the green and the purple, the blue and the 
golden. 



October, the maiden of bright yellow tresses. 
Loiters for love in these cool wildernesses ; 
Loiters, knee-deep, in the grasses, to listen, 
Where dripping rocks gleam and the leafy pools 

glisten : 
Then is the time when the water-moons splendid 
Break with their gold, and are scattered or blended 
Over the creeks, till the woodlands have warning 
Of songs of the beU-bird and wings of the Morning. 



"Welcome as waters unkissed by the summers 
Are the voices of bell-birds to thirsty far-comers. 
When fiery December sets foot in the forest. 
And the need of the wayfarer presses the sorest, 
Pent in the ridges for ever and ever 
The bell-birds direct him to spring and to river, 
With ring and with ripple, like runnels whose torrents 
Are toned by the pebbles and leaves in the currents. 



BELL BIEDS. 47 

Often I sit, looking back to a childhood, 

Mixt with the sights and the sounds of the wildwood, 

Longing for power and the sweetness to fashion. 

Lyrics with beats like the heart-beats of Passion ; — 

Songs interwoven of lights and of laughters 

Borrowed from bell-birds in far forest-rafters ; 

So I might keep in the city and alleys 

The beauty and strength of the deep mountain valleys : 

Charming to slumber the pain of my losses 

With glimpses of creeks and a vision of mosses. 



A DEATH IN THE BUSH. 

The hut was built of bark and shrunken slabs 
That wore the marks of many rains, and showed 
Dry flaws, wherein had crept and nestled rot. 
Moreover, round the bases of the bark 
Were left the tracks of flying forest-fires, 
As you may see them on the lower bole 
Of every elder of the native woods. 

Eor, ere the early settlers came and stocked 
These wilds with sheep and kine, the grasses grew 
So that they took the passing pilgrim in, 
And whelmed him, like a running sea, from sight. 

And therefore, through the fiercer summer months, 
While all the swamps were rotten — while the flats 
Were baked and broken ; when the clayey rifts 



A DEATH IN THE BUSH. 49 

Yawned wide, half-choked with drifted herbage past, 
Spontaneous flames would burst from thence, and race 
Across the prairies all day long. 

At night 
The winds were up, and then with fourfold speed, 
A harsh gigantic growth of smoke and fire 
Would roar along the bottoms, in the wake 
Of fainting flocks of parrots, wallaroos. 
And 'wildered wild things, scattering right and left^ 
For safety vague, throughout the general gloom. 

Anon, the nearer hill-side growing trees 
"Would take the surges ; thus, from bough to bough. 
Was borne the flaming terror ! Bole and spire, 
Eank after rank, now pillared, ringed, and rolled 
In blinding blaze, stood out against the dead 
Down-smothered dark, for fifty leagues away. 

Por fifty leagues ! and when the winds were strong, 
Tor fifty more ! But, in the olden time, 
These fires were counted as the harbingers 
Of life-essential storms ; since out of smoke 
And heat there came across the midnight ways 
Abundant comfort, with upgathered clouds, 
And runnels babbling of a plenteous fall. 



50 A DEATH IN THE BUSH. 

So comes the Soutlierii gale at evenfall 

(The swift " brickfielder" of the local folk) 

About the streets of Sydney, when the dust 

Lies burnt on glaring windows, and the men 

Look forth from doors of drouth, and drink the change 

"With thirsty haste and that most thankful cry 

Of, " here it is — the cool, bright, blessed rain ! " 

The hut, I say, was built of bark and slabs, 
And stood, the centre of a clearing, hemmed 
By hurdle-yards, and ancients of the blacks : 
These moped about their lazy fires, and sang 
Wild ditties of the old days, with a sound 
Of sorrow, like an everlasting wind, 
Which mingled with the echoes of the noon, 
And moaned amongst the noises of the night. 

From thence a cattle-track, with link to link, 
Ean off against the fishpools, to the gap. 
Which sets you face to face with gleaming miles 
Of broad Orara, winding in amongst 
Black, barren ridges, where the nether spurs 
Are fenced about by cotton-scrub, and grass 
Blue-bitten with the salt of many droughts. 

'Twas here the shepherd housed him every night. 
And faced the prospect like a patient soul ; 



A DEATH IN THE BUSH. 51 

Eorne up by some vague liope of better days, 
And Grod's fine blessing in his faithful wife ; 
Until the humour of his malady 
Took cunning changes from the good to bad, 
And laid him lastly on a bed of death. 

Two months thereafter, when the summer heat 

Had roused the serpent from his rotten lair, 

And made a noise of locusts in the boughs, 

It came to this, that, as the blood-red sun 

Of one fierce day of many slanted down 

Obliquely past the nether jags of peaks 

And gulfs of mist, the tardy night came vexed 

By belted clouds, and scuds that wheeled and whirled 

To left and right about the brazen clifts 

Of ridges, rigid with a leaden gloom. 

Then took the cattle to the forest camps 

With vacant terror, and the hustled sheep 

Stood dumb against the hurdles, even like 

A fallen patch of shadowed mountain snow ; 

And ever through the curlew's call afar 

The storm grew on, while round the stinted slabs 

Sharp snaps and hisses came, and went, and came, 

The huddled tokens of a mighty blast 

Which ran with an exceeding bitter cry 

Across the tumbled fragments of the hills, 

And through the sluices of the gorge and glen. 



52 A DEATH DT THE BTJSH. 

So, therefore, all about the shepherd's hut 
That space was mute, save when the fastened dog,. 
"Without a kennel, caught a passing glimpse 
Of firelight moving through the lighted chinks ; 
For then he knew the hints of warmth within, 
And stood, and set his great pathetic eyes. 
In wind and wet, imploring to be loosed. 

Not often now the watcher left the couch 
Of him she watched ; since, in his fitful sleep, 
His lips would stir to wayward themes, and close- 
With bodeful catches. Once she moved away, 
Half-deafened by terrific claps, and stooped. 
And looked without ; to see a pillar dim 
Of gathered gusts and fiery rain. 

Anon, 
The sick man woke, and, startled by the noise, 
Stared round the room, with dull delirious sight, 
At this wild thing and that; for, through his eyes. 
The place took fearful shapes, and fever showed 
Strange crosswise lights about his pillow-head. 
He, catching there at some phantasmic help, 
Sat upright on the bolster, with a cry 
Of, " Where is Jesus ?— it is bitter cold ! " 
And then, because the thundercalls outside 
"Were mixed for him with slanders of the Past, 



A DEATH IN THE BUSH. 53 

He called his weeping wife by name, and said, 
" Come closer, darling ! we shall speed away 
Across the seas, and seek some mountain home. 
Shut in from liars, and the wicked words 
That track us day and night, and night and day." 

So waned the sad refraiil. And those poor lips, 
Whose latest phrases were for peace, grew mute, 
And into everlasting silence passed. 



As fares a swimmer who hath lost his breath 
In 'wildering seas afar from any help — 
Who, fronting Death, can never realise 
The dreadful Presence, but is prone to clutch 
At every weed upon the weltering wave ; 
So fared the watcher, poring o'er the last 
'Of him she loved, with dazed and stupid stare ; 
Half conscious of the sudden loss and lack 
Of all that bound her life, but yet without 
The power to take her mighty sorrow in. 



Then came a patch or two of starry sky ; 
And through a reef of cloven thunder-cloud 
The soft Moon looked : a patient face beyond 
The fierce impatient shadows of the slopes, 
And the harsh voices of the broken hills ! 



54 A DEATH IN THE BTJSH. 

A patient face, and one which came and wrought 
A lovely silence like a silver mist 
Across the rainy relics of the storm. 

For in the breaks and pauses of her light 
The gale died out in gusts ; yet, evermore 
About the roof-tree, on the dripping eaves, 
The damp wind loitered ; and a fitful drift 
Sloped through the silent curtains, and athwart 
The dead. 

There, when the glare had dropped behind 
A mighty ridge of gloom, the woman turned 
And sat in darkness face to face with Grod, 
And said — " I know," she said, " that Thou art wise ; 
That when we build and hope, and hope and build, 
And see our best things fall, it comes to pass 
For evermore that we must turn to Thee ! 
And therefore now, because I cannot find 
The faintest token of Divinity 
In this my latest sorrow, let Thy light 
Inform mine eyes, so I may learn to look 
On something past the sight which shuts, and blinds^ 
And seems to drive me wholly, Lord, from Thee." 

Now waned the moon beyond complaining depths ; 
And, as the dawn looked forth from showery woods 
(Whereon had dropt a hint of red and gold), 



A DEATH IN THE BUSH. 55 

There went about the crooked cavern-eaves 
Low flute-like echoes with a noise of wings 
And waters flying down far-hidden fells. 
Then might be seen the solitary owl, 
Psrched in the clefts ; scared at the coming light. 
And staring outward (like a sea-shelled thing 
Chased to his cover by some bright fierce foe) 
As at a monster in the middle waste. 



At list the great kingfisher came and called 
Across the hollows loud with early whips, 
And ighted, laughing, on the shepherd's hut. 
And loused the widow from a swoon like death. 



This diy, and after it was noised abroad, 

By blanks, and straggling horsemen on the roads, 

That ha was dead " who had been sick so long,'* 

There locked a troop from far-surrounding runs 

To see their neighbour and to bury him. 

And mm who had forgotten how to cry 

(Eougl flinty fellows of the native bush) 

Now leirned the bitter way, beholding there 

The waited shadow of an iron frame 

Brough; down so low by years of fearful pain ; 

And ma-king, too, the woman's gentle face. 

And all the pathos in her moaned reply 

Of " maters, we have lived in better days." 



56 A DEATH IN THE BUSH. 

One stooped — a stockman from the nearer hills — 
To loose his wallet-strings, from whence he took 
A bag of tea, and laid it on her lap ; 
Then, sobbing, " Grod will help you, missus, yet," 
He sought his horse with most bewildered eyes, 
And, spurring swiftly, galloped down the glen. 

Where black Orara nightly chafes his brink, 

Midway between lamenting lines of oak 

And "Warra's gap, the shepherd's grave was built. 

And there the wild-dog pauses, in the midst 

Of moonless watches : howling through the gloon 

At hopeless shadows flitting to and fro, 

What time the East Wind hums his darkest hynn, 

And rains beat heavy on the ruined leaf. 

There, while the Autumn in the cedar trees 
Sat cooped about by cloudy evergreens. 
The widow sojourned on the silent road, 
And mutely faced the barren mound, and plucket 
A straggling shrub from thence, and passed awiy. 
Heart-broken on to Sydney ; where she took 
Her passage, in an English vessel bound 
To London, for her home of other years. 



At rest ! Not near, with Sorrow on his grav^ 
And roses quickened into beauty — wrapt 
In all the pathos of perennial bloom ; 



A DEATH IN THE BUSH. 57 

But far from these, beneath the fretful clay 
Of lands within the lone perpetual cry 
Of hermit plovers and the night-like oaks, 
All moaning for the peace which never comes. 

At rest ! And she who sits and waits behind 

Is in the shadows ; but her faith is sure, 

And one fine promise of the coming days 

Is breaking, like a blessed morning, far 

On hills " that slope through darkness up to Q-od." 



A SPANISH LOVE SONG. 

Feom Andalusian gardens 

I bring the rose and rue, 
And leaves of subtle odour, 

To weave a gift for you. 
You'll know the reason wherefore 

The sad is with the sweet ! 
Mj flowers may lie, as I would, 

A carpet for your feet. 

The heart — the heart is constant I 

It holds its secret, Dear ! 
But often in the night time 

I keep awake for fear. 
I have no hope to whisper, 

I have no prayer to send, 
God save you from such passion I 

God help you from such end ! 



A SPANISH LOVE SONG. 5^ 

Tou first, you last, you false love ! 

In dreams your lips I kiss. 
And thus I greet your Shadow, 

" Take this, and this, and this ! " 
When dews are on the casement, 

And winds are in the pine, 
I have you close beside me — 

In sleep your mouth is mine. 

I never see you elsewhere ; 

You never think of me ; 
But fired with fever for you 

Content I am to be. 
Tou will not turn, my Darling, 

Nor answer when I call ; 
But yours are soul and body 

And love of mine and all ! 

Tou splendid Spaniard ! listen — 

My passion leaps to flame 
For neck, and cheek, and dimple. 

And cunning shades of shame I 
I tell you, I would gladly 

Grive Hell myself to keep, 
To cling to, half a moment. 

The lips I taste in sleep. 



THE LAST OF HIS TEIBE. 

He crouches, and buries his face on his knees, 

And hides in the dark of his hair ; 
For he cannot look up to the storm- smitten trees, 

Or think of the loneliness there : 
Of the loss and the loneliness there. 

The wallaroos grope through the tufts of the grass. 

And turn to their covers for fear ; 
But he sits in the ashes and lets them pass 

Where the boomerangs sleep with the spear : 
With the nullah, the sling, and the spear. 

Uloola, behold him ! The thunder that breaks 

On the tops of the rocks with the rain, 
And the wind which drives up with the salt of the 
lakes, 
Have made him a hunter again : 
A hunter and fisher again. 



THE LAST OF HIS TRIBE. 61 

For his eyes have been full with a smouldering thought; 

But he dreams of the hunts of yore, 
And of foes that he sought, and of fights that he- 
fought 
"With those who will battle no more : 
"Who will go to the battle no more. 

It is well that the water which tumbles and fills 

Goes moaning and moaning along ; 
For an echo rolls out from the sides of the hills. 

And he starts at a wonderful song : 
At the sounds of a wonderful song. 

And he sees, through the rents of the scattering fogs. 

The corrobboree warlike and grim, 
And the lubra who sat by the fire on the logs, 

To watch, like a mourner, for him : 
Like a mother and mourner, for him. 

"Will he go in his sleep from these desolate lands, 

Like a chief, to the rest of his race, 
"With the honey-voiced woman who beckons, and 
stands, 
And gleams like a Dream in his face — 
Like a marvellous Dream in his face ? 



AEAKOON. 

Lo, in storms, the triple -headed 

Hill, whose dreaded 
Bases battle with the seas, 
Looms across fierce widths of fleeting 

Waters beating 
Evermore on roaring leas ! 

Arakoon, the black, the lonely ! 

Housed with only 
Cloud and rain-wind, mist and damp : 
Eound whose foam-drenched feet, and nether 

Depths, together 
Sullen sprites of thunder tramp ! 



AEAKOOIT. 

There the East hums loud and surly, 

Late and early, 
Through the chasms and the caves ; 
And across the naked verges 

Leap the surges ! 
White and wailing waifs of waves. 

Day by day, the sea-fogs gathered — 

Tempest-fathered — 
Pitch their tents on yonder peak ! 
Yellow drifts and fragments, lying 

Where the flying 
Torrents chafe the cloven creek ! 

And at nightfall, when the driven 

Bolts of heaven 
Smite the rock and break the bluff. 
Thither troop the elves whose home is 

Where the foam is. 
And the echo, and the clough. 

Ever girt about with noises. 

Stormy voices, 
And the salt breath of the strait, 
Stands the steadfast Mountain Griant, 

Grim, reliant, 
Dark as Death, and firm as Eate ! 



1 



64 AEAKOON. 

So when trouble treads, like ttunder, 

Weak men under — 
Treads, and breaks the thews of these- 
Set thyself to bear it bravely. 

Greatly, gravely. 
Like the hill in yonder seas : 

Since the wrestling, and endurance 

Give assurance 
To the faint at bay with pain, 
That no soul to strong Endeavour 

Yoked for ever, 
Works against the tide in vain. 



THE VOYAGE OE TELEaONUS. 

Ill fares it with the man whose lips are set 

To bitter themes and words that spite the gods : 

For, seeing how the son of Saturn sways 

With eyes and ears for all, this one shall halt 

As on hard hurtful hills ; his days shall know 

The plaintive front of Sorrow ; level looks 

With cries ill-favoured shall be dealt to him ; 

And this shall be that he may think of peace 

As one might think of alienated lips 

Of sweetness touched for once in kind warm dreams:. 

Tea, fathers of the high and holy face, 

This soul thus sinning shall have cause to sob 

" Ah, ah," for sleep, and space enough to learn 

The wan wild Hyrie's aggregated song 

That starts the dwellers in distorted heights, 



66 THE YOYAGE OF TELEGONUS. 

With all tlie meaning of perpetual sighs 
Heard in the mountained deserts of the world, 
And where the green-haired waters glide between 
The thin lank weeds and mallows of the marsh. 

But thou to whom these things are like to shapes 

That come of darkness — thou whose life slips past 

E-egarding rather these with mute fast mouth — 

Hear none the less how fleet Telegonus, 

The brass-clad hunter, first took oar and smote 

Swift eastward-going seas, with face direct 

For narrowing channels and the twofold coasts 

Past Colchis and the fierce Symplegades 

And utmost islands washed by streams unknown. 

For in a time when Phasis whitened wide 
And drove with violent waters blown of wind 
Against the bare salt limits of the land, 
It came to pass that, joined with Cytheraea, 
The black-browed Ares, chafing for the wrong 
Ulysses did hitn on the plains of Troy, 
Set heart against the king ; and when the storms 
Sang high in thunder and the Thracian rain. 
The god bethought him of a pale-mouthed priest 
Of Thebae, kin to ancient Chariclo, 
And of an omen which the prophet gave 
That touched on Death and grief to Ithaca ; 



THE YOTAGE OF TELEGONUS. 67 

Then, knowing how a heavy-handed fate 
Had laid itself on Circe's brass-clad son, 
He pricked the hunter with a lust that turned 
All thoughts to travel and the seas remote ; 
But chiefly now he stirred Telegonus 
To longings for Ms father's exiled face, 
And dreams of rest and honey-hearted love, 
And quiet death with much of funeral flame 
Par in the mountains of a favoured land 
Eeyond the wars and.wailings of the waves. 



So past the ridges where the coast abrupt 
Dips greyly westward, Circe^s strong-armed son 
Swept down the foam of sharp-divided straits 
And faced the stress of opening seas. Sheer out 
The vessel drave ; but three long moons the gale 
Moaned round; and swift strong streams of fire 

revealed 
The labouring rowers and the lightening surf. 
Pale watchers deafened of sonorous storm, 
And dripping decks and rents of ruined sails. 
Yea, when the hollow ocean-driven ship 
Wheeled sideways, like a chariot cloven through 
In hard hot battle, and the night came up 
Against strange headlands lying East and North, 
Behold a black wild wind with death to all 
Han shoreward, charged with flame and thunder-smoke, 



68 THE VOYAGE OF TELEGONTJS. 

"Which, blew the waters into wastes of white 

And broke the bark, as lightning breaks the pine ; 

Whereat the sea in fearful circles shewed 

TJnpitied faces turned from Zeus and light, 

"Wan swimmers wasted with their agony, 

And hopeless eyes and moaning mouths of men. 

But one held by the fragments of the wreck. 

And Ares knew him for Telegonus, 

Whom heavy-handed Fate had chained to deeds 

Of dreadful note with sin beyond a name. 

So, seeing this, the black-browed lord of war. 

Arrayed about by Jove's authentic light, 

Shot down amongst the shattered clouds and called 

With mighty strain, betwixt the gaps of storm, 

" Oceanus, Oceanus ! " whereat 

The surf sprang white, as when a keel divides 

The gleaming centre of a gathered wave ; 

And, ringed with flakes of splendid fire of foam. 

The son of Terra rose halfway and blew 

The triple trumpet of the water-gods. 

At which great winds fell back and all the sea 

Grew dumb, as on the land a war-feast breaks 

When deep sleep falls upon the souls of men. 

Then Ares of the night-like brow made known 

The brass-clad hunter of the facile feet 

Hard clinging to the slippery logs of pine. 

And told the omen to the hoary god 

That touched on Death and grief to Ithaca ; 



THE TOTAGE OF TELEGONTJS. 69 

Wherefore Oceanus with help of hand 
Bore by the chin the warrior of the North, 
A moaning mass, across the shallowing surge, 
And cast him on the rocks of alien shores 
Against a wintry morning shot with storm. 



Hear also thou how mighty gods sustain 

The men set out to work the ends of Fate 

Which fill the world with tales of many tears. 

And vex the sad face of Humanity : 

Six days and nights the brass-clad chief abode 

Pent up in caverns by the straightening seas, 

And fed on ferns and limpets ; but the dawn 

Before the strong sun of the seventh, brought 

A fume of fire and smells of savoury meat. 

And much rejoicing, as from neighbouring feasts ; 

At which the hunter, seized with sudden lust. 

Sprang up the crags, and, like a dream of Fear, 

Leapt, shouting, at a huddled host of hinds 

Amongst the fragments of their steaming food ; 

And, as the hoarse wood-wind in Autumn sweeps 

To every zone the hissing latter leaves, 

So, fleet Telegonus, by dint of spear 

And strain of thunderous voice, did scatter these 

East, South, and North : 'twas then the chief had rest, 

Hard by the outer coast of Ithaca, 

Unknown to him who ate the spoil and slept. 



70 THE YOTAGE OP TELEaO]STJS. 

Nor stayed lie hand thereafter ; but, when noon 
Burned dead on misty hills of stunted fir, 
This man shook slumber from his limbs, and sped 
Against hoar beaches and the kindled clifi's 
Of falling waters ; these he waded through, 
Beholding past the forests of the "West 
A break of light, and homes of many men, 
And shining com, and flowers, and fruits of flowers ; 
Tea, seeing these, the facile-footed chief 
Grrasped by the knot the huge -ZEgean lance, 
And fell upon the farmers ; wherefore they 
Left hoe and plough, and crouched in heights remote- 
Companioned with the grey- winged fogs ; but he 
Made waste their fields and throve upon their 

toil- 
As throve the boar, the fierce four-footed curse 
TVTiich Artemis did raise in Calydon 
To make stem mouths wax white with foreign fear, 
All in the wild beginning of the "World. 



.So one went down and told Laertes' son 
Of w^hat the brass-clad stranger from the straits 
Had worked in Ithaca : whereat the King 
Eose, like a god, and called his mighty heir, 
Telemachus, the wisest of the wise ; 
And these two, having counsel, strode without, 
And armed them with the arms of warlike days — 



THE YOTAGE OF TELEGOIS^TJS. 71 

The helm, the javelin, and the sun-like shield. 

And glancing greaves and quivering stars of steel ! 

Tea, stern Ulysses, rusted not with rest, 

But dread as Ares, gleaming on his car 

Gave out the reins ; and straightway all the lands 

Were struck by noise of steed and shouts of men, 

And furious dust, and splendid wheels of flame. 

Meanwhile the hunter (starting from a sleep 

In which the pieces of a broken dream 

Had shown him Circe with most tearful face). 

Caught at his spear, and stood, like one at bay 

"When Summer brings about Arcadian horns 

And headlong horses mixt with maddened hounds ; 

Then huge Ulysses, like a fire of fight. 

Sprang sideways on the flying car, and drave 

Full at the brass-clad warrior of the North 

His massive spear ; but fleet Telegonus 

Stooped from the death, but heard the speedy lance 

Sing like a thin wind through the steaming air ; 

Yet he, dismayed not by the dreadful foe — 

Unknown to him — dealt out his strength, and aimed 

A strenuous stroke at great Laertes' son, 

Which missed the shield, but bit through flesh and 

bone, 
And drank the blood, and dragged the soul from 

thence ! 
So fell the King ! and one cried, " Ithaca ! 
Ah, Ithaca ! " and turned his face and wept. 



72 THE YOTAGE OF TELEGONTJS. 

Then came another — wise Telemaclius — 
Who knelt beside the man of many days 
And pored upon thp face ; but lo, the life 
"Was like bright water spilt in sands of thirst, 
A wasted splendour swiftly drawn away. 
Yet held he by the dead : he heeded not 
The moaning warrior who had learnt his sin — 
Who waited now, like one in lairs of pain, 
Apart with darkness hungry for his fate ; 
For, had not wise Telemachus the lore 
Which makes the pale-mouthed seer content to sleep 
Amidst the desolations of the world ? 
So therefore he who knew Telegonus, f 

The child of Circe by Laertes' son, 
Was set to be a scourge of Zeus, smote not 
But rather sat with moody eyes, and mused, 
And watched the dead. For who may brave the 
gods? 



Yet, O my fathers, when the people came. 
And brought the holy oils and perfect fire, 
And built the pile, and sang the tales of Troy — 
Of desperate travels in the olden time. 
By shadowy mountains and the roaring sea, 
Xear windy sands and past the Thracian snows — 
The man who crossed them all to see his sire. 
And had a loyal heart to give the King, 



THE YOYAGE OF TELEGONUS. 73 

Instead of blows — this man did little more 

Than moan outside the fume of funeral rites, 

All in a rushing twilight full of rain, 

And clap his palms for sharper pains than swords. 

Yea, when the night broke out against the flame. 

And lonely noises loitered in the fens. 

This man nor stirred nor slept, but lay at wait. 

With fastened mouth. Eor who may brave the gods ? 



SITTINa BY THE FIEE. 

Ah ! the solace in the sitting, 

Sitting by the fire, 
When the wind without is calling 
And the fourfold clouds are falling. 
With the rain-racks intermitting, 

Over slope and spire. 
Ah ! the solace in the sitting, 

Sitting by the fire. 

Then, and then, a man may ponder. 

Sitting by the fire. 
Over fair far days, and faces 
Shining in sweet-coloured places 
Ere the thunder broke asunder 

Life and dear Desire. 
Thus, and thus, a man may ponder. 

Sitting by the fire. 



SITTING BY THE flEE. 75 

"Waifs of song pursue, perplex me, 

Sitting by the fire : 
Just a note, and lo, the change then ! 
Like a child, I turn and range then. 
Till a shadow starts to vex me — 

Passion's wasted pyre. 
So do songs pursue, perplex me, 

Sitting by the fire. 

Night by night — the old, old story — 

Sitting by the fire, 
Night by night, the dead leaves grieve me : 
Ah. ! the touch when youth shall leave me. 
Like my fathers, shrunken, hoary, 

"With the years that tire. 
Night by night — that old, old, story. 

Sitting by the fire. 

Sing for slumber, sister Clara, 

Sitting by the fire. 
I could hide my head and sleep now, 
Par from those who laugh and weep noWy 
Like a trammelled, faint wayfarer, 

'Neath yon mountain-spire. 
Sing for slumber, sister Clara, 

Sitting by the fire. 



CLEONE. 

^ING her a song of the sun : 

Eill it with tones of the stream, — 
Echoes of waters that run 

Glad with the gladdening gleam. 
Let it be sweeter than rain, 

Lit by a tropical moon : 
Light in the words of the strain, 

Love in the ways of the tune. 

Softer than seasons of sleep : 

Dearer than life at its best I 
Oive her a baUad to keep, 

"Wove of the passionate "West : 
Oive it and say of the hours — 

" Haunted and hallowed of thee, 
Plower-like woman of flowers, 

What shall the end of them be ? " 



CLEONE. 77 

Tou that have loved her so nrnch, 

Loved her asleep and awake, 
Trembled because of her touch, 

What have you said for her sake P 
Far in the falls of the day, 

Down in the meadows of myrrh. 
What has she left you to say 

Filled with the beauty of her ? 

Take her the best of your thoughts,. 

Let them be gentle and grave. 
Say, " I have come to thy courts, 

Maiden, with all that I have." 
So she may turn with her sweet 

Face to your love and to you. 
Learning the way to repeat 

Words that are brighter than dew. 



CHAELES HAEPIJE. 

Wheee Harpur lies, the rainy streams, 
And wet hill-heads, and hollows weeping, 

Are swift with wind, and white with gleams, 
And hoarse with sounds of storms unsleeping. 

Fit grave it is for one whose song 

Was tuned by tones he caught from torrents, 
And filled with mountain-breaths, and strong 

"Wild notes of falling forest-currents. 

So let him sleep ! the rugged hymns 
And broken lights of woods above him ! 

And let me sing how Sorrow dims 

The eyes of those that used to love him. 



CHABLES HABPIJB. 79 

As April in the wilted wold 

Turns faded eyes on splendours waning, 
What time the latter leaves are old, 

And ruin strikes the strays remaining ; 

So we that knew this singer dead, 
"Whose hands attuned the Harp Australian, 

May set the face and bow the head. 
And mourn his fate and fortunes alien. 

The burden of a perished faith 

"Went sighing through his speech of sweetness, 
With human hints of Time and Death, 

And subtle notes of incompleteness. 

But when the fiery power of Youth 

Had passed away and left him nameless, 

Serene as Light, and strong as Truth, 
He lived his life untired and tameless. 

And, far and free, this man of men 
With wintry hair and wasted feature. 

Had fellowship with gorge and glen, 

And learned the loves and runes of Nature. 

Strange words of wind, and rhymes of rain. 
And whispers from the inland fountains. 

Are mingled in his various strain 

With leafy breaths of piny mountains. 



80 CHAELES HAEPXIE. 

Eut, as the under-currents sigh 

Eeneath the surface of a river, 
The music of Humanity 

Dwells in his forest-psalms for ever. 

No soul was he to sit on heights 

And live with rocks apart and scornful : 

Delights of men were his delights, 

And common troubles made him mournfuL 

The flying forms of unknown powers 

"With lofty wonder caught and filled him ; 

But there were days of gracious hours 

"When sights and sounds familiar thrilled him. 

The pathos worn by wayside things, 
The passion found in simple faces, 

Struck deeper than the life of springs 

Or strength of storms and sea- swept places. 

But now he sleeps, the tired bard. 
The deepest sleep ; and lo, I proifer 

These tender leaves of my regard 
With hands that falter as they offer. 



GOD HELP OUE MEN AT SEA. 

The wild niglit comes like an owl to its lair ; 

The black clouds follow fast ; 
And the sun-gleams die and the lightnings glare. 
And the ships go heaving past, past, past — 
The ships go heaving past ! 

Bar the doors, and higher, higher 
Pile the faggots on the fire ! 
Now abroad by many a light 
Empty seats there are to-night ; 
Empty seats that none may fill, 
Eor the storm grows louder still ! 
How it surges and swells through the gorges and 
dells, 
Under the ledges and over the lea. 
Where a watery sound goeth moaning around. 
G-od help our men at sea ! 

Oh ! never a tempest blew on the shore, 

But that some heart did moan 
Eor a darling voice it would hear no more, 

And a face that had left it lone, lone, lone — 

A face that had left it lone ! 



82 GOD HELP OUK MEN AT SEA. 

I am watcMng by a pane 
Darkened with the gusty rain ; 
"Watching through a mist of tears, 
Sad with thoughts of other years : 
For a brother I did miss 
In a stormy time like this. 
Ah! the torrent howls past, like a fiend on the 
blast, 
Under the ledges and over the lea ; 
And the pent waters gleam, and the wild surges 
scream ! 

God help our men at sea ! 

Ah, Lord, they may grope through the dark to find 

Thy hand within the gale ; 
And cries may rise on the wings of the wind 
From mariners weary and pale, pale, pale — 
From mariners weary and pale ! 

'Tis a fearful thing to know, 
While the storm-winds loudly blow. 
That a man can sometimes come 
Too near to his father's home ; 
So that he shall kneel and say, 
" Lord, I would be far away !" 
Ho ! the hurricanes roar round a dangerous shore, 

Under the ledges and over the lea ; 
Ai\d there twinkles a light on the billows so white — 
God help our men at sea ! 



cooaEE. 

Sing the song of wave-worn Coogee — Coogee in the 
distance white 

"With its jags and points disrupted, gaps and fractures 
fringed with light ! 

Haunt of gledes and restless plovers of the melan- 
choly wail 

Ever lending deeper pathos to the melancholy gale. 

There, my brothers, down the fissures, chasms deep 
and wan and wild. 

Grows the sea-bloom, one that blushes like a shrink- 
ing fair blind child ; 

And amongst the oozing forelands many a glad green 
rock-vine runs. 

Getting ease on earthy ledges sheltered from Decem- 
ber suns. 

Often, when a gusty morning, rising cold and gray 

and strange. 
Lifts its face from watery spaces, vistas full with 

cloudy change ; 



84 cooaEE. 

Bearing up a gloomy burden which anon begins to 

wane, 
Pading in the sudden shadow of a dark determined 

rain ; 
Do I seek an eastern window, so to watch the 

breakers beat 
Eound the steadfast crags of Coogee, dim with drifts^ 

of driving sleet : 
Hearing hollow mournful noises sweeping down a 

solemn shore 
While the grim sea-caves are tideless and the storm 

strives at their core. 



Often when the floating vapours fill the sUent autumn 

leas, 
Dreamy memories fall like moonlight over silver 

sleeping seas, 
Youth and I and Love together ! — other times and 

other themes 
Come to me unsung, unwept for, through the faded 

evening gleams : 
Come to me and touch me mutely — I that looked 

and longed so well. 
Shall I look and yet forget them ? who may know or 

who foretell ? • 

Though the southern wind roams, shadowed with its 

immemorial grief. 



COOGEE. 85 

"Wliere the frosty wings of "Winter leave their white- 
ness on the leaf ? 

Eriend of mine beyond the waters, here and here 

these perished days 
Haunt me with their sweet dead faces and their old 

divided ways. 
You that helped and you that loved me, take this 

song and when you read 
Let the lost things come about you, set your 

thoughts and hear and heed : 
Time has laid his burden on us : we who wear our 

manhood now — 
We would be the boys we liave been, free of heart 

and bright of brow — 
Be the boys for just an hour, with the splendour 

and the speech 
Of thy lights and thunders, Coogee, flying up thy 

gleaming beach ! 

Heart's desire and heart's division ! who would come 

and say to me 
With the eyes of far-off friendship, "You are as 

you used to be"? 
Something glad and good has left me here with 

sickening discontent, 
Tired of looking, neither knowing, what it was or 

where it went. 



Ob COOGEE. 

So it is this sight of Coogee, shining in the morning- 
dew, 

Sets me stumbling through dim summers once on fire- 
with youth and you. 

Summers pale as southern evenings when the year 
has lost its power, 

And the wasted face of A.pril weeps above the withered 
flower. 

Not that seasons bring no solace — not that time lacks^ 

light and rest ; 
But the old things were the dearest, and the old loves 

seem the best. 
We that start at songs familiar — we that tremble at a 

tone, 
Floating down the ways of music, like a sigh of sweet- 
ness flown, 
"We can never feel the freshness — never find again the- 

mood 
Left amongst fair-featured places brightened of our 

brotherhood ; 
This, and this, we have to think of, when the night is 

over all, 
And the woods begin to perish, and the rains begin to 

faU. 



Stand out, swift-footed leaders of the horns, 

And draw strong breath, and fill the hollowy cliff 

"With shocks of clamour, — let the chasm take 

The noise of many trumpets, lest the hunt 

Should die across the dim Aonian hills, 

Nor break through thunder and the surf- white cave 

That hems about the old-eyed Ogyges 

And bars the sea-wind, rain- wind, and the sea ! 

Much fierce delight hath old-eyed Ogyges 

[A hairless shadow in a lion's skin] 

In tumult, and the gleam of flying spears. 

And wild beasts vexed to death ; " for," sayeth he, 

" Here lying broken, do I count the days 

For very trouble ; being like the tree — 

The many- wintered father of the trunks 



88 OGxaEs. 

On yonder ridges : wherefore it is well 
To feel the dead blood kindling in my veins 
At sound of boar or battle ; yea to find 
A sudden stir, like life, about my feet, 
And tingling pulses through this frame of mine 
What time the cold clear day spring, like a bird 
Afar off, settles on the frost-bound peaks. 
And all the deep blue gorges, darkening down, 
Are filled with men and dogs and furious dust ! " 

So in the time whereof thou weetest well — 

The melancholy morning of the World — 

He mopes or mumbles, sleeps or shouts for glee, 

And shakes his sides — a cavern-hutted King ! 

But when the ouzel in the gaps at eve 

Doth pipe her dreary ditty to the surge 

All tumbling in the soft green level light, 

He sits as quiet as a thick-mossed rock. 

And dreameth in his cold old savage way 

Of gliding barges on the wine-dark waves. 

And glowing shapes, and sweeter things than sleep , 

But chiefly, while the restless twofold bat 

Goes flapping round the rainy eaves above, 

AVhere one broad opening letteth in the moon. 

He starteth, thinking of that gray-haired man. 

His sire : then oftentimes the white-armed child 

Of thunder-bearing Jove, young Thebe, comes 

And droops above him with her short sweet sighs 



OGTaES. 89 

For Love distraught — for dear Love's faded sake 
That weeps and sings and weeps itself to death 
Because of casual eyes, and lips of frost, 
And careless mutterings, and most weary years. 

Bethink you, doth the wan ^Egyptian count 

This passion, wasting like an unfed flame, 

Of any worth now ; seeing that his thighs 

Are shrunken to a span ; and that the blood 

"Which used to spin tumultuous down his sides 

Of life in leaping moments of desire, 

Is drying like a thin and sluggish stream 

In withered channels — think you, doth he pause 

Eor golden Thebe and her red young mouth ? 

Ah, golden Thebe — Thebe, weeping there. 

Like some sweet wood-nymph wailing for a rock, 

If Octis with the Apollonian face — 

That fair-haired prophet of the sun and stars — 

Oould take a mist and dip it in the West 

To clothe thy limbs of shine about with shine 

And all the wonder of the amethyst. 

He'd do it — kneeling like a slave for thee ! 

If he could find a dream to comfort thee. 

He'd bring it : thinking little of his lore. 

But marvelling greatly at those eyes of thine. 

Tea, if the Shepherd waiting for thy steps. 

Pent down amongst the dank black- weeded rims. 



90 oaTGES. 

Could slied his life like rain about thy feet, 
He'd count it sweetness past all sweets of love 
To die by thee — his life's end in thy sight. 

O but he loves the hunt, doth Ogyges ! 

And therefore should we blow the horn for him r 

He, sitting mumbling in his surf- white cave 

"With helpless feet and alienated eyes, 

Should hear the noises nathless dawn by dawn 

Which send him wandering swiftly through the days 

When like a springing cataract he leapt 

From crag to crag, the strongest in the chase 

To spear the lion, leopard, or the boar ! 

O but he loves the hunt ; and, while the shouts 

Of mighty winds are in this mountained World, 

Behold the white bleak woodman. Winter, halts 

And bends to him across a beard of snow 

For wonder ; seeing Summer in his looks 

Because of dogs and calls from throats of hair 

All in the savage hills of Hyria ! 

And, through the yellow evenings of the year, 

What time September shows her mooned front 

And poppies burnt to blackness droop for drouth,. 

The dear Demeter, splashed from heel to thigh 

With spinning vine-blood, often stoops to him 

To crush the grape against his wrinkled lips 

Which sets him dreaming of the thickening wolve* 

In darkness, and the sound of moaning seas. 



OGTGES. 91 

So with tlie blustering tempest doth he find 

A stormy fellowship ; for when the North 

Comes reeling downwards with a breath like spears, 

Where Dryope the lonely sits all night 

And holds her sorrow crushed betwixt her palms. 

He thinketh mostly of that time of times 

When Zeus the Thunderer — broadly-blazing King — 

Like some wild comet beautiful but fierce. 

Leapt out of cloud and fire and smote the tops 

Of black Ogygia with his red right hand, 

At which great fragments tumbled to the Deeps — 

The mighty fragments of a mountain-land — 

And all the World became an awful Sea ! 



But, being tired, the hairless Ogyges 
Best loveth night and dim forgetfulness ! 
" For," sayeth he, " to look for sleep is good 
When every sleep is as a sleep of death 
To men who live, yet know not why they live, 
Nor how they live ! I have no thought to tell 
The people when this time of mine began ; 
But forest after forest grows and falls, 
And rock by rock is wasted with the rime. 
While I sit on and wait the end of all ; 
Here taking every footstep for a sign ; 
An ancient shadow whiter than the foam ! " 



BY THE SEA. 

The caves of the sea have been troubled to-day 

With the water which whitens, and widens, and 
fiUs; 
And a boat with our brother was driven away 

By a wind that came down from the tops of the hills. 
Behold I have seen on the threshold again 

A face in a dazzle of hair ! 
Do you know that she watches the rain, and the main, 

And the waves which are moaning there ? 
Ah, moaning and moaning there ! 

Now turn from your casements, and fasten your doors, 

And cover your faces, and pray, if you can ; 
There are wails in the wind, there are sighs on the 
shores, 

And alas, for the fate of a storm-beaten man ! 
Oh, dark falls the night on the rain-rutted verge, 

So sad with the sound of the foam ! 
Oh, wild is the sweep and the swirl of the surge; 

And his boat may never come home ! 
Ah, never and never come home ! 



SONa or THE CATTLE-HTJNTEES. 

"While the morning light beams on the fern-matted 
streams, 
And the water-pools flash in its glow, 
Down the ridges we fly, with a loud ringing cry — 

Down the ridges and gullies we go ! 
And the cattle we hunt, they are racing in front, 

"With a roar like the thunder of waves ; 
As the beat and the beat of our swift horses' feet 
Start the echoes away from their caves ! 
As the beat and the beat 
Of our swift horses' feet 
Start the echoes away from their caves ! 

Like a wintery shore that the waters ride o'er. 
All the lowlands are filling with sound ; 

Eor swiftly we gain where the herds on the plain. 
Like a tempest, are tearing the ground ! 



^4 SONG OF THE CATTLE-HUNTEES. 

And we'll follow them hard to the rails of the yard, 

Over gulches and mountain-tops grey, 
Where the beat and the beat of our swift horses* 
feet 
Will die with the echoes away ! 

Where the beat and the beat 
Of our swift horses' feet 
Will die with the echoes away ! 



KllSra SAUL AT GILBOA. 

liViTH noise of battle and tlie dust of fray, 
B^alf-hid in fog, tlie gloomy mountain lay ; 
But Succoth's watchers from their outer fields 
Saw fits of flame and gleams of clashing shields 
Por where the yellow river draws its spring 
The hosts of Israel travelled thundering ! 
'There, beating like the storm that sweeps to sea 
Across the reefs of chafing Galilee, 
The car of Abner and the sword of Saul 
Drave Gaza down Gilboa's southern wall ; 
But swift and sure the spears of Ekron flew. 
Till peak and slope were drenched with bloody dew ! 
" Shout, Timnath, shout ! " the blazing leaders cried, 
And hurled the stone, and dashed the stave aside : 
'" Shout, Timnath, shout ! Let Hazor hold the height, 
Bend the, long bow and break the lords of fight !" 
Prom every hand the swarthy strangers sprang, 
Chief leaped on chief, with buckler buckler rang ! 
The flower of armies ! set in Syrian heat. 
The ridges clamoured under labouring feet ; 



yb KING SATJL AT GILBOA. 

Nor stayed the warriors till from Salim's road 
The crescent horns of Abner's squadrons glowed. 
Then, like a shooting splendour on the wing, 
The strong-armed son of Kish came thundering ; 
And as in Autumn's fall, when woods are bare. 
Two adverse tempests meet in middle air. 
So Saul and Achish, grim with heat and hate. 
Met by the brooks and shook the scales of Fate ,-: 
Por now the struggle swayed, and, firm as rocks 
Against the storm- wind of the equinox. 
The rallied lords of Judah stood and bore 
All day the fiery tides of fourfold war. 



But he that fasted in the secret cave, 
And called up Samuel from the quiet grave, 
And stood with darkness and the mantled ghosts 
A bitter night on shrill Samarian coasts, 
Knew well the end : of how the futile sword 
Of Israel would be broken by the Lord ; 
How Gath would triumph with the tawny line 
That bend the knee at Dagon's brittle shriae ; 
And how the race of Kish would fall to wreck 
Because of vengeance stayed at Amalek ; 
Tet strove the sunlike king, nor rested hand 
Till yellow evening filled the level land ; 
Then Judah reeled before a biting hail 
Of sudden arrows shot from Akor's vale, 



KING SAUL AT GILBOA. 97 

Where Libnah, lapped in blood from thigh to heel, 

Drew the tense string and pierced the quivering steel. 

There fell the sons of Saul, and, man by man, 

The chiefs of Israel up to Jonathan ; 

And, while swift Achish stooped and caught the spoil, 

Ten chosen archers red with sanguine toil 

Sped after Saul, who, faint and sick and sore 

"With many wounds, had left the thick of war : 

He, like a baffled bull by hunters prest. 

Turned sharp about and faced the flooded west. 

And saw the star-like spears and moony spokes 

Grieam from the rocks and lighten through the oaks ; 

A sea of splendour ! How the chariots rolled 

On wheels of blinding brightness manifold ! 

While stumbling over spike and spine and spur 

Of sultry lands, escaped the son of Ner 

With smitten men ! At this the front of Saul 

Grrew darker than a blasted tower wall ; 

And seeing how there crouched upon his right 

Aghast with fear a black Amalekite, 

He called and said, " I pray thee, man of pain, 

Eed from the scourge, and recent from the chair, 

Set thou thy face to mine and stoutly stand 

With yonder bloody sword-hilt in thine hand 

And fall upon me." But the faltering hind 

Stood trembling like a willow in the wind. 

Then further, Saul : " Lest Ashdod's vaunting hosts 

Should bear me captive to their bleak-blown coasts, 



98 KIKa SAUL AT GILBOA. 

I pray tbee, smite me : seeing peace lias fled, 
And rest lies wholly with the quiet dead." 
At this a flood of sunset broke, and smote 
Keen blazing sapphires round a kingly throat. 
Touched arm and shoulder, glittered in the crest, 
And made swift starlights on a jewelled breast ! 
So, starting forward like a loosened hound, 
The stranger clutched the sword and wheeled it 

round, 
And struck the Lord's Anointed ! Fierce and fleet, 
Philistia came with shouts and clattering feet ; 
By gaping gorges and by rough defile, 
Dark Ashdod beat across a dusty mile ; 
Hot Hazor's bowmen toiled from spire to spire ; 
And Grath sprang upwards like a gust of fire ! 
On either side did Libnah's lords appear ; 
And brass- clad Timnath thundered in the rear ! 
*' Mark, Achish, mark ! " — South-west and south there 

sped 
A dabbled hireling from the dreadful dead ! 
" Mark, Achish, mark ! " — The mighty front of Saul, 
Grreat in his life and god-like in his fall ! 
This was the arm that broke Philistla's pride 
"Where Kishon chafes his seaward-going tide ! 
This was the sword that smote till set of sun 
Eed Gath from Michmash unto Ajalon ! 
Low in the dust. And Israel scattered far ! 
And dead the trumps, and crushed the hoofs of war ! 



KING SAUL AT GILBOA. 99 

So fell the king ! as it was said by him 
Who hid his forehead in a mantle dim 
At bleak Endor, what time unholy rites 
Yext the long sleep of still Samarian heights : 
!For bowed to earth before the hoary Priest 
Did he of Kish withstand the smoking feast, 
To fast, in darkness and in sackcloth rolled, 
And house with wild things in the biting cold ; 
Because of sharpness lent to Gaza's sword, 
And Judah widowed by the angry Lord. 

So Silence came ! As when the outer verge 

Of Carmel takes the white and whistling surge, 

Hoarse hollow noises till the caves and roar 

Along the margins of the echoing shore. 

Thus War had thundered ! But as Evening breaks 

Across the silver of Assyrian lakes. 

When reapers rest, and through the level red 

Of sunset, peace like holy oil is shed, 

Thus Silence fell ; but Israel's daughters crept 

Outside their thresholds, waited, watched, and wept. 

Then they that dwell beyond the flats and fens 
Of sullen Jordan, and in gelid glens 
Of Jabesh-Grilead, chosen chiefs and few. 
Around their loins the hasty girdle drew, 
And faced the forests huddled fold on fold. 
And dells of glimmering greenness manifold, 



100 KING SArL AT GILBOA. 

What time Orion in the west did set 

A shining foot on hills of wind and wet : 

These journeyed nightly till they reached the capes 

Where Ashdod revelled over heated grapes ; 

And, while the feast was loud and scouts were turned. 

From Saul's bound body cord by cord they burned, 

And bore the king athwart the place of tombs. 

And hasted eastward through the tufted glooms ; 

Nor broke the cake, nor stayed the step till Morn 

Shot over Debir's cones and crags forlorn ! 

From Jabesh then the weeping virgins came ; 
In Jabesh then they built the funeral flame ; 
With costly woods they piled the lordly pyre, 
Brought yellow oils and fed the perfect fire ; 
While round the crescent stately Elders spread 
The flashing armour of the mighty dead, 
With crown and spear, and all the trophies won 
From many wars by Israel's dreadful Son. 
Thence, when the feet of Evening paused and stood 
On shadowy mountains and the roaring flood 
(As through a rushing twilight full of rain 
The weak Moon looked athwart Gadara's plain), 
The younger warriors bore the urn, and broke 
The humid turf about a wintering oak, 
And buried Saul ; and, fasting, went their ways. 
And hid their faces seven nights and days. 



IN THE VALLEY. 

Said the yellow-liaired Spirit of Spring 

To the white-footed Spirit of Snow, 
" On the wings of the tempest take wing, 

And leave me the valleys, and go." 
And, straightway, the streams were unchained, 

And the frost-fettered torrents broke free. 
And the strength of the winter- wind waned 

In the dawn of a light on the sea. 

Then a morning-breeze followed and fell, 

And the woods were alive and astir 
With the pulse of a song in the deU, 

And a whisper of day in the fir. 
Swift rings of sweet water were rolled 

Down the ways where the lily-leaves grew. 
And the green, and the white, and the gold, 

Were wedded with purple and blue. 



102 Ilf THE TALLET. 

But the lips of the flower of the rose 

Said, " where is the ending hereof ? 
Is it sweet with you, life, at the close ? 

Is it sad to be emptied of love ? " 
And the voice of the flower of the peach 

Was tender and touching in tone, 
" When each has been grafted on each, 

It is sorrow to live on alone." 

Then the leaves of the flower of the vine 

Said, " what will there be in the day 
When the reapers are red with my wine. 

And the forests are yellow and grey? " 
And the tremulous flower of the quince 

Made answer, " three seasons ago 
My sisters were star-like, but since. 

Their graves have been made in the snow,'" 

Then the whispering flower of the fern 

Said, " who will be sad at the death, 
When Summer blows over the burn, 

With the fierceness of fire in her breath ? " 
And the mouth of the flower of the sedge 

Was opened to murmur and sigh, 
" Sweet wind-breaths that pause at the edge 

Of the nightfall, and falter, and die." 



TWELVE SONNETS. 



I. 
A MOUNTAIN SPEINa. 

Peace hath an altar there. The sounding feet 

Of thunder, and the Vildering wings of rain, 
Against fire-rifted summits flash and beat, 

And through grey upper gorges swoop and strain ; 

But round that hallowed mountain-spring remain, 
Tear after year, the days of tender heat. 
And gracious nights whose lips with flowers are sweet, 

And filtered lights, and lutes of soft refrain. 
A still bright pool. To men I may not tell 

The secret that its heart of water knows — 

The story of a loved and lost repose ; 
Tet tJiis I say to cliff", and close-leaved dell : 
A fitful Spirit haunts yon limpid well, 

Whose likeness is the faithless face of Eose. 



104 SO]ST!rETS. 



II. 

LAUEA. 

If Laura — lady of the flower-soft face — 

Should light upon these verses, she may take 
The tenderest line, and through its pulses trace 

What man can suffer for a woman's sake. 

For in the nights that burn, the days that break, 
A thin pale Figure stands in Passion's place ; 
And Peace comes not, nor yet the perished grace 

Of Youth to keep old faiths and fires awake. 
Ah, marvellous maid! Life sobs, and sighing saith, 

" She left me, fleeting like a fluttered dove ; 
But I would have a moment of her breath, 

So I might taste the sweetest sense thereof. 

And catch from blossoming, honeyed lips of love 
Some faint, some fair, some dim delicious death.' 



SONNETS. 105 



III. 

BY A EIYEE. 

But red ripe moutli and brown luxurious eyes 

Of her I love, by all your sweetness sbed 
In far fair days, on one whose memory flies 

To faithless lights and gracious speech gainsaid, 

I pray you, when yon river-path I tread, 
Make with the woodlands some soft compromise 
Lest they should vex me into fruitless sighs 

"With visions of a woman's gleaming head ! 
Por every green and golden-hearted thing 

That gathers beauty in that shining place 
Beloved of beams and wooed by wind and wing. 

Is rife with glimpses of her marvellous face ; 
And in the whispers of the lips of Spring 

The music of her lute-like voice I trace. 



106 SONITETS. 



rr. 
ATTILA. 

What tliougli his feet were shod witli sharp fierce 
flame, 

And Death and Euin were his daily squires, 
The Scythian helped by Heaven's thunders came : 

The time was ripe for Grod's avenging fires. 

Lo, loose lewd trulls and lean luxurious liars 
Had brought the fair fine face of Eome to shame 
And made her one with sins beyond a name — 

That queenly daughter of imperial sires ! 
The blood of elders like the blood of sheep 

"Was dashed acrx)ss the circus ! Once, while din. 
And dust, and lightnings, and a daggled heap 
Of beast-slain men made lords with laughter leap, 

Night fell, with rain. The Earth so sick of sin 
Had turned her face into the dark to weep. 



SONNETS. 107 



V. 

A EEWAED. 

BECArsE a steadfast flame of clear intent 

Gave force and beauty to fuU-actioned life ; 
Because his way was one of firm ascent, 

"WTiose stepping-stones were hewn of change and 
strife ; 

Because as husband loveth noble wife, 
He loved fair Truth ; because the thing he meant 
To do, that thing he did, nor paused, nor bent. 

In face of poor and pale conclusions ; yea. 
Because of this, how fares the Leader dead ? 

What kind of mourners weep for him to-day ? 
What golden shroud is at his funeral spread ? 

Upon his brow what leaves of laurel, say ? 

About his Ireast is tied a sackcloth grey. 
And hnots of thorns deface his lordly head. 



108 SONNETS. 



VI. 

TO 



A HANDMAID to the Genius of thy Song 

Is sweet fair Scholarship. 'Tis she supplies 

The fiery Spirit of the passioned eyes 
With subtle syllables whose notes belong 

To some chief source of perfect melodies. 
And, glancing through a laurelled lordly throng 

Of shining singers, lo, my vision flies 
To "William Shakespeare ! he it is whose strong 

Full flute-like music haunts thy stately Yerse. 
A worthy Levite of his court thou art ! 

One sent amongst us to defeat the curse 
That binds us to the Actual. Tea, thy part, 
O lute-voiced lover, is to lull the heart 

Of love repelled : its darkness to disperse. 



SONNETS. 109 



VII. 

THE STANZA OF CHILDE HAEOLD. 

Who framed the stanza of Childe Harold ? He 
It was who, halting on a stormy shore, 
Knew well the lofty Voice which evermore 

In grand distress doth haunt the sleepless sea 
With solemn sounds ! And as each wave did roll 
Till one came up, the mightiest of the whole, 

To sweep and surge across a vacant lea, 

Wild words were wedded to wild melody ! 
This Poet must have had a speechless sense 
Of some dead Summer's boundless affluence ! 

Else, whither can we trace the passioned lore 

Of Beauty, steeping to the very core 

His royal Verse ? And that rare light which lies 
About it like a Sunset in the skies ? 



110 SONNETS. 



Till. 

A LiymG POET. 

He knows tlie sweet vexation in the strife 

Of Love witli Time, this Bard who fain would stray 
To fairer place beyond the storms of Life, 
With astral faces near him day by day. 
In deep-mossed dells the mellow waters flow 
Which best he loves ; for there the echoes, rife 
With rich suggestions of his Long Ago, 

Astarte ! pass with thee. And, far away, 
Dear Southern Seasons haunt the dreamy eye : 
Spring, flower-zoned, and Summer, warbling low 
In tasselled corn, alternate come and go ; 
While gipsy Autumn, splashed from heel to thigh 
With vine-blood, treads the leaves ; and, halting nigh, 
Wild Winter bends across a beard of snow. 



SOKNETS. Ill 



IX. 

DANTE AND YIRaiL. 

When lost Prancesca sobbed ber broken tale 

Of Love, and Sin, and boundless Agony ; 
While that wan Spirit by ber side did wail 

And bite bis lips for utter misery — 

The Grrief wbicb could not speak, nor bear, nor 
see ; 
So tender grew the superbuman face 
Of one who listeaed, that a mighty trace 

Of superhuman Woe gave way, and pale, 
The sudden ligbt upstruggled to its place ; 

While all bis limbs began to faint and fail 
Witb such excess of Pity ! But, behind. 

The Eoman Virgil stood — the calm, the wise — 

With not a shadow in his regal eyes, 
A stately type of all bis stately kind ! 



112 SONNETS. 



I. 

BEST. 

Sometimes we feel so spent for want of rest, 
We have no thought beyond. I know to-day, 
When tired of bitter lips and dull delay 
With faithless words, I cast mine eyes upon 
The shadows of a distant mountain-crest. 
And said, " That hill must hide within its breast 
Some secret glen secluded from the sun. 

O, mother Nature ! would that I could run 
Outside to thee, and, like a wearied guest 

Half blind with lamps and sick of feasting, lay 
An aching head on thee. Then down the streams 
The moon might swim ; and I should feel her 

grace. 
While soft winds blew the sorrows jfrom my face 
So quiet in the fellowship of dreams." 



SONNETS. 113 



* XI. 

AFTEE PAETINa. 

I CANNOT tell what cliange hath come to you 

To vex your splendid hair. I only know 
One Grrief : the Passion left betwixt us two, 

Like some forsaken watchfire, burneth low. 

'Tis sad to turn and find it dying so 
Without a hope of resurrection ! Yet, 

O radiant face that found me tired and lone, 
I shall not for the dear dead Past forget 

The sweetest looks of all the Summers gone. 
Ah ! Time hath made familiar wild Eegret ; 

Eor now the leaves are white in last year's bowers ; 
And now doth sob along the ruined leas 
The homeless storm from saddened southern seas, 

While March sits weeping over withered flowers. 



114 SOXXETS. 



XII. 

ALFEED TENNYSOK 

The silvery dimness of a happy dream 

I've known of late. Methought where Byron 
moans, 

Like some wild gulf in melancholy zones, 
I passed tear-blinded ! Once a lurid gleam 

Of stormy sunset loitered on the sea 
"While, travelling troubled, like a straitened stream, 

The voice of Shelley died away from me! 

Still sore at heart I reached a lake-lit lea ; 
And then, the green- mossed glades with many a 

grave 
"Where lies the calm which Wordsworth used to love ; 

And lastly, Locksley Hall ! from whence did rise 
A haunting Song that blew, and breathed, and blew, 
"With rare delights : 'twas there I woke and knew 

The sumptuous comfort left in drowsy eyes. 



SUTHERLAND'S aEAYE. 

\Tlie first ivliite man buried in Australia.^ 

All night long the sea out yonder — all night long the 

wailful sea, 
Yext of winds and many thunders, seeketh rest 

unceasingly ! 
Seeketh rest in dens of tempest where, like one 

distraught with pain. 
Shouts the wild-eyed sprite. Confusion: seeketh rest, 

and moans in vain ! 
Ah, but you should hear it calling, calling when the 

haggard sky 
Takes the darks and damps of Winter with the 

mournful marsh-fowls' cry ; 
Even while the strong, swift torrents from the rainy 

ridges come 
Leaping down and breaking backwards — million 

coloured shapes of foam ! 



116 sutheelaitd's geave. 

Then, and then, the sea out yonder chiefly looketh 

for the boon 
Portioned to the pleasant valleys, and the grave sweet 

summer moon : 
Boon of Peace, the still, the saintly, spirit of the 

dewdells deep — 
Yellow dells, and hollows haunted by the soft dim 

dreams of sleep. 



All night long the flying water breaks upon the 

stubborn rocks — 
Ooze-filled forelands burnt and blackened, smit and 

scarred with lightning shocks ; 
But above the tender sea-thrift — but beyond the 

flowering fern. 
Runs a little pathway westward — pathway quaint 

with turn on turn — 
Westward trending, thus it leads to shelving shores 

and slopes of mist : 
Sleeping shores, and glassy bays of green and gold 

and amethyst ! 
There tread gently — gently, pilgrim ; there with 

thoughtful eyes look round ; 
Cross thy breast and bless the silence : lo, the place 

is holy ground ! 
Holy ground for ever, stranger ! All the quiet silver 

lights 



I 



SUTHEELAIfD'S GKAVE. 117 

Dropping from the starry heavens through the soft 

Australian nights — 
Dropping on those lone grave-grasses — come serene, 

unbroken, clear, 
Like the love of Grod the Father, falling, falling, year 

by year ! 
Tea, and like a Voice supernal, there the daily wind 

doth blow 
In the leaves above the Sailor buried ninety years 

ago. 



SYEIJSrX. 

A HEAP of low dark rocky coast 
Unknown to foot or feather ! 

A sea-voice moaning like a ghost ; 
And fits of fiery weather ! 



The flying Syrinx turned and sped 
By dim mysterious hollows, 

Where night is black, and day is red, 
And frost the fire-wind follows ! 



Strong heavy footfalls in the wake, 
Came up with flights of water : 

The gods were mournful for the sake 
Of Ladon's lovely daughter. 



STEINX. 119 

Por when slie came to spike and spiue, 

Where reef and river gather, 
Her feet were sore with shell and chine ; 

She could not travel farther. 



Across a naked strait of land, 

Blown sleet and surge were humming ; 
But trammelled with the shifting sand, 

She heard the monster coming ! 



A thing of hoofs, and horns, and lust ! 

A gaunt goat-footed stranger ! 
She bowed her body in the dust, 

And called on Zeus to chanse her. 



And called on Hermes fair and fleet, 
And her of hounds and quiver, 

To hide her in the thickets sweet 
That sighed above the river. 



So He that sits on flaming wheels. 
And rules the sea and thunder. 

Caught up the satyr by the heels. 
And tore his skirts in sunder. 



120 STEINX. 

While Areas of the glittering plumes 
Took Ladon's dauojhter liorhtlv, 

And set her in the gracious glooms 
That mix with moon-mist nightly. 



And touched her lips with wild-flower wine ; 

And changed her body slowly, 
Till in soft reeds of song and shine 

Her life was hidden wholly. 



ON THE PAEOO. 

As when the strong stream of a wintering sea 
Eolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm, 
And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saith 
Wild things and woeful of the White South Land 
Alone with Grod and Silence in the cold — 
As when this cometh, men from dripping doors 
Look forth, and shudder for the mariners 
Abroad, so we for absent brothers looked 
In days of drought, and when the flying floods 
Swept boundless : roaring down the bald, black, plains 
Beyond the farthest spur of western hills. 

For where the Barwan cuts a rotten land, 
Or lies unshaken, like a great blind creek. 
Between hot mouldering banks, it came to this, 
All in a time of short and thirsty sighs, 
That thirty rainless months had left the pools 
And grass as dry as ashes : then it was 
Our kinsman started for the lone Paroo, 



122 Olf THE PAEOO. 

From point to point, Trith patient strivings, sheer 
Across tlie horrors of tlie windless downs, 
Blue- gleaming like a sea of molten steel. 

But never drought had broke them : never flood 
Had quenched them : thej with mighty youth and 

health, 
And thews and sinews knotted like the trees — 
They, like the children of the native woods, 
Could stem the strenuous waters, or outlive 
The crimson days and dull dead nights of thirst 
Like camels ! yet of what avail was strength 
Alone to them — though it was like the rocks 
On stormy mountains — in the bloody time 
"When fierce sleep caught them in the camps at rest, 
And violent darkness gripped the life in them 
And whelmed them, as an eagle unawares 
Is whelmed and slaughtered in a sudden snare. 

All murdered by the blacks ! smit while they lay 
In silver dreams, and with the far faint fall 
Of many waters breaking on their sleep ! 
Tea, in the tracts unknown of any man 
Save savages — the dim-discovered ways 
Of footless silence or unhappy winds — 
The wild men came upon them, like a fire 
Of desert thunder; and the fine firm lips 



ON THE PAEOO. 1231 

That touched a mother's lips a year before, 
And hands that knew a dearer hand than life, 
"Were hewn like sacrifice before the stars. 
And left with hooting owls, and blowing clouds, 
And falling leaves, and solitary wings ! 

Ay, you may see their graves — you who have toiled^ 
And tripped, and thirsted, like these men of ours ;. 
For verily I say that not so deep 
Their bones are that the scattered drift and dust 
Of gusty days will never leave them bare. 
O dear, dead, bleaching bones ! I know of those 
Who have the wild strong will to go and sit 
Outside all things with you, and keep the ways 
Aloof from bats, and snakes, and trampling feet 
That smite your peace and theirs — who have the heart 
Without the lusty limbs to face the fire. 
And moonless midnights, and to be indeed, 
Por very sorrow, like a moaning wind 
In wint'ry forests with perpetual rain. 

Because of this — because of sisters left 

With desperate purpose and dishevelled hair. 

And broken breath, and sweetness quenched in tears — 

Because of swifter silver for the head. 

And furrows for the face — because of these 

That should have come with Age, that come with Pain, 



■■i 



124 ON THE PAEOO. 

O Master ! Father ! sitting where our eyes 
Are tired of looking, say for once are we — 
Are ive to set our lips with weary smiles 
before the bitterness of Life and Death, 
And call it honey, while we bear away 
A taste like wormwood ? 

Turn thyself, and sing — 
Sing, Son of Sorrow ! Is there any gain 
For breaking of the loins, for melting eyes, 
And knees as weak as water ? any peace, 
Or hope, for casual breath, and labouring lips, 
For clapping of the palms, and sharper sighs 
Than frost ; or any light to come for those 
Who stand and mumble in the alien streets 
With heads as grey as Winter ? any balm 
For pleading women, and the love that knows 
Of nothing left to love ? 

They sleep a sleep 
Unknown of dreams, these darling friends of ours. 
And ive who taste the core of many tales 
Of tribulation — ice whose lives are salt 
With tears indeed — we therefore hide our eyes 
And weep in secret lest our grief should risk 
The rest that hath no hurt from daily racks 
Of fiery clouds and immemorial rains. 



FAITH IN GOD. 

Hate faith in Grod. For whosoever lists 
To calm conviction in these days of strife, 

"Will learn that in this steadfast stand exists 
The scholarship severe of human life — 

This face to face with Doubt ! I know how strong 
His thews must be who fights, and falls, and bears, 

By sleepless nights, and vigils lone and long, 

And many a woeful wraith of wrestling prayers ; 

Tet trust in Him ! not in an old Man throned 
"With thunders on an everlasting cloud, 

But in that awful Entity, enzoned 

By no wild wraths nor bitter homage loud. 

"When from the summits of some sudden steep 
Of Speculation, you have strength to turn 

To things too boundless for the broken sweep 
Of finite comprehension, wait and learn 



126 FAITH IX GOD. 

"That Grod liatli been "His own interpreter" 
From first to last ; — so you will understand 

The tTibe who best succeed when men most err 
To suck through fogs the fatness of the land. 

One thing is surer than the autumn tints 
We saw last week in yonder river bend, 

That all our poor expression helps and hints, 
However vaguely, to the solemn end 

That Grod is Truth. And if our dim ideal 

Fall short of fact — so short that we must weep, 

Why shape specific sorrows, though the real 
Be not the song which erewhile made us sleep ? 

Hemember, Truth draws upward ! This, to us. 
Of steady happiness should be a cause 

Beyond the diff'erential calculus, 

Or Kant's dull dogmas and mechanic laws. 

A man is manliest when he wisely knows 
How vain it is to halt, and pule, and pine, 

Whilst under every mystery haply flows 
The finest issue of a love divine. 



MOUNTAIN MOSS. 

It lies amongst the sleeping stones, 
Far down the hidden mountain-glade; 

And past its brink the torrent moans 
For ever in a dreamy shade : 



A little patch of dark-green moss, 
Whose softness grew of quiet ways, 

(With all its deep, delicious floss,) 
In slumb'rous suns of summer days. 



Tou know the place ? With pleasant tints 
The broken sunset lights the bowers ; % 

And then the woods are full with hints 
Of distant, dear, voluptuous flowers ! 



128 MO-HN-TAI??- MOSS. 

'Tis often now the pilgrim turns 
A faded face towards tliat seat, 

And cools his brow amongst the ferns 
The runnel dabbling at his feet. 



There fierce December seldom goes, 

"With scorching step, and dust, and drouth ; 

But, soft and low, October blows 
Sweet odours from her dewy mouth. 



And Autumn, like a gipsy bold, 

Doth gather near it grapes and grain. 

Ere "Winter comes, the woodman old. 
To lop the leaves in wind and rain. 



O, greenest moss of mountain glen, 
The face of Eose is known to thee ; 

But we shall never share with men 
A knowledge dear to Love and me ! 



For are they not between us saved. 
The words my darling used to say ; 

"What time the western waters laved 
The forehead of the fainting Day I 



MOUNTAIN MOSS. 129 

Cool comfort had we on your breast 

While yet the fervid Noon burned mute 

O'er barley field and barren crest, 
And leagues of gardens flushed with fruit. 



Oh ! sweet and low, we whispered so ; 

And sucked the pulp of plum and peach : 
But it was many years ago, 

When each, you know, was loved of each. 



THE aLEX OP AEEAWATTA. 

A SKY of wind ! And while these fitful gusts 

Are beating round the windows in the cold, 

With sullen sobs of rain, behold I shape 

A Settler's story of the wild old times : 

One told by camp-fires when the station-drays 

Were housed and hidden, forty years ago ; 

While swarthy drivers smoked their pipes, and drew, 

And crowded round the friendly-gleaming flame 

That lured the dingo howling from his caves 

And brought sharp sudden feet about the brakes. 

A tale of Love and Death. And shall I say 
A tale of Love in Death ; for all the patient eyes 
That gathered darkness, watching for a son 
And brother, never dreaming of the fate — 
The fearful fate he met alone, unknown, 
Within the ruthless Australasian wastes ? 



THE GLEN OF AERAWATTA. 131 

Por, in a far-off sultry Summer rimmed 
With thunder-cloud and red with forest-fires, 
All day, by ways uncouth and ledges rude, 
The wild men held upon a stranger's trail 
"Which ran against the rivers and athwart 
The gorges of the deep blue western hills. 

And when a cloudy sunset, like the flame 
In windy evenings on the Plains of Thirst 
Beyond the dead banks of the far Barcoo, 
Lay heavy down the topmost peaks, they came 
"With pent-in breath and stealthy steps, and crouched. 
Like snakes, amongst the grasses, till the Night 
Had covered face from face and thrown the gloom 
Of many shadows on the front of things. 

There, in the shelter of a nameless glen 

Penced round by cedars and the tangled growths 

Of blackwood stained with brown and shot with grey, 

The jaded white-man built his fire, and turned 

His horse adrift amongst the water-pools 

That trickled underneath the yellow leaves 

And made a pleasant murmur, like the brooks 

Of England through the sweet autumnal noons. 

Then after he had slaked his thirst, and used 
The forest-fare, for which a healthful day 
Of mountain-life had brought a zest, he took 



132 THE GLEX OF AEEAWATTA. 

His axe, and shaped with boughs and wattle-forks 
A wurley, fashioned like a b ashman's roof : 
The door brought out athwart the strenuous flame 
The back thatched in against a rising wind. 

And, while the sturdy hatchet filled the clifts 
With sounds unknown, the immemorial haunts 
Of echoes sent their lonely dwellers forth 
Who lived a life of wonder : flying round 
And round the glen — what time the kangaroo 
Leapt from his lair and huddled with the bats — 
Far-scattering down the wildly startled fells. 
Then came the doleful owl ; and evermore 
The bleak morass gave out the bittern's call ; 
The plover's cry ; and many a fitful wail 
Of chilly omen, falling on the ear 
Like those cold flaws of wind that come and go 
An hour before the break of day. 

Anon 
The stranger held from toil, and, settling down^ 
He drew rough solace from his well-filled pipe 
And smoked into the night : revolving there 
The primal questions of a squatter's life ; 
For in the flats, a short day's journey past 
His present camp, his station yards were kept 
With many a lodge and paddock jutting forth 



THE GLEIf OF AEEAWATTA. 133 

Across the heart of unnamed prairie-lands, 
Now loud with bleating and the cattle bells 
And misty with the hut-fire's daily smoke. 

Wide spreading flats, and western spurs of hills 

That dipped to plains of dim perpetual blue ; 

Bold summits set against the thunder-heaps ; 

And slopes be-hacked and crushed by battling kine ! 

Where now the furious tumult of their feet 

Oives back the dust and up from glen and brake 

Evokes fierce clamour, and becomes indeed 

A token of the squatter's daring life, 

Which growing inland — growing year by year, 

Doth set us thinking in these latter days. 

And makes one ponder of the lonely lands 

Eeyond the lonely tracks of Burke and Wills, 

Where, when the wandering Stuart fixed his camps 

Tn central wastes afar from any home 

Or haunt of man, and in the changeless midst 

Of sullen deserts and the footless miles 

Of sultry silence, all the ways about 

Grew strangely vocal and a marvellous noise 

Became the wonder of the waxing glooms. 

Now, after Darkness, like a mighty spell 
Amongst the hills and dim dispeopled dells, 
Had brought a stillness to the soul of things, 
It came to pass that, from the secret depths 



134 THE GLEX OF AEEAWATTA. 

Of dripping gorges, many a runnel-voice 

Came, mellowed with the silence, and remained 

About the caves, a sweet though alien sound : 

Now rising ever, like a fervent flute 

In moony evenings, when the theme is love : 

Now falling, as ye hear the Sunday bells 

While hastening fieldward from the gleaming town> 

Then fell a softer mood ; and Memory paused 
"With faithful Love, amidst the sainted shrines 
Of Youth and Passion in the valleys past 
Of dear delights which never grow again. 
And if the stranger (who had left behind 
Par anxious homesteads in a wave-swept isle 
To face a fierce sea-circle day by day, 
And hear at night the dark Atlantic's moan) 
Now took a hope and planned a swift return. 
With wealth and health and with a youth unspent, 
To those sweet ones that stayed with Want at home^ 
Say who shall blame him — though the years are long, 
And Life is hard, and waiting makes the heart grow 
old? 

Thus passed the time until the Moon serene 
Stood over high dominion like a dream 
Of Peace : within the white-transfigured woods ; 
And o'er the vast dew-dripping wilderness 
Of slopes illumined with her silent fires. 



THE GLEN OF AEEAWATTA. 135 

Then far beyond the home of pale red leaves 

And silver sluices, and the shining stems 

Of runnel-blooms, the dreamy wanderer saw, 

Tbe wilder for the vision of the Moon, 

Stark desolations and a waste of plain 

All smit by flame and broken with the storms : 

Black ghosts of trees, and sapless trunks that stood 

Harsh hollow channels of the fiery noise 

"Which ran from bole to bole a year before, 

And grew with ruin, and was like, indeed. 

The roar of mighty winds with wintering streams 

That foam about the limits of the land, 

And mix their swiftness with the flying seas. 

Now, when the man had turned his face about 
To take his rest, behold the gem-like eyes 
Of ambushed wild things stared from bole and brake 
With dumb amaze and faint-recurring glance, 
And fear anon that drove them down the brush ; 
While from his den the dingo, like a scout 
In sheltered ways, crept out and cowered near 
To sniff the tokens of the stranger's feast 
And marvel at the shadows of the flame. 

Thereafter grew the wind ; and chafing depths 
In distant waters sent a troubled cry 
Across the slumb'rous Forest ; and the chill 
Of coming rain was on the sleeper's brow. 



136 THE GLEN OF AEEAWATTA. 

When, flat as reptiles hutted in the scrub, 
A deadly crescent crawled to where he lay — 
A band of fierce fantastic savages 
That, starting naked round the faded fire. 
With sudden spears and swift terrific yells. 
Came bounding wildly at the white man's head, 
And faced him, staring like a dream of Hell ! 

Here let me pass ! I would not stay to tell 

Of hopeless struggles under crushing blows ; 

Of how the surging fiends with thickening strokes 

Howled round the Stranger till they drained his 

strength ; 
How Love and Life stood face to face with Hate 
And Death ; and then how Death was left alone 
With Niojht and Silence in the sobbino: rains. 



o 



So, after many moons, the searchers found 
The body mouldering in the mouldering dell 
Amidst the fungi and the bleaching leaves. 
And buried it ; and raised a stony mound 
Which took the mosses : then the place became 
The haunt of fearful legends, and the lair 
Of bats and adders. 

There he lies and sleeps 
From year to year : in soft Australian nights ; 
And through the furnaced noons ; and in the times 



THE GLEN OF AEEAWATTA. 137 

Of wind and wet ! yet never mourner comes 
To drop upon that grave the Christian's tear 
Or pluck the foul dank weeds of death away. 

Eut while the English Autumn filled her lap 

"With faded gold, and while the reapers cooled 

Their flame-red faces in the clover grass, 

They looked for him at home ; and when the frost 

Had made a silence in the morning lanes. 

And cooped the farmers by December fires. 

They looked for him at home : and through the days 

Which brought about the million-coloured Spring 

"With moon-like splendours in the garden plots, 

They looked for him at home : while Summer danced, 

A shining singer, through the tasselled corn. 

They looked for him at home. Prom sun to sun 

They waited. Season after season went. 

And Memory wept upon the lonely moors, 

And Hope grew voiceless, and the watchers passed, 

Xike shadows, one by one, away. 

And he. 
Whose fate was hidden under forest leaves. 
And in the darkness of untrodden dells, 
Became a marvel. Often by the hearths 
In wiater nights, and when the wind was wild 
Outside the casements, children heard the tale 



138 THE GLEX or AEEAWATTA. 

Of how he left their native vales behind 
(Where he had been a child himself) to shape 
New fortunes for his father's fallen house ; 
Of how he struggled — how his name became, 
By fine devotion and unselfish zeal, 
A name of beauty in a selfish land ; 
And then, of how the aching hours went by, 
"With patient listeners praying for the step 
Which never crossed the floor again. So passed 
The tale to children ; but the bitter end 
E/emained a wonder, like the unknown grave 
Alone with Grod and Silence in the hills. 



EUTEEPE. 

Child of Light, the bright, the birdlike ! wilt thou: 

float and float to me 
Pacing winds, and sleets, and waters, flying glimpses^ 

of the sea ? 
Down amongst the hills of tempest where the elves 

of tumult roam — 
Elown wet shadows of the summits, dim sonorous 

sprites of foam? 
Here, and here, my days are wasted, shorn of leaf,. 

and stript of fruit : 
Vexed because of speech half-spoken. Maiden with 

the marvellous lute ! 
Vexed because of songs half-shapen, smit with fire, 

and mixed with pain : 



140 EUTEEPE. 

Part of thee, and part of Sorrow, like a sunset pale 

with rain. 
Child of Light, the bright, the bird-like ! wilt thou 

float and float to me 
Pacing winds, and sleets, and waters, flying glimpses 

of the sea ? 



All night long, in fluent pauses, falling far, but full, 

but fine, 
Faultless friend of flowers and fountains, do I hear 

that voice of thine. 
All night long, amidst the burden of the lordly storm, 

that sings 
High above the tumbled forelands, fleet and fierce 

with thunderings ! 
Then, and then, my love, Euterpe, lips of life replete 

with dreams 
Murmur for thy sweet sharp fragments dying down 

Lethean streams : 
Murmur for thy mouth's marred music, splendid 

hints that burn and break 
Heavy with excess of beauty : murmur for thy music's 

sake. 
All night long in fluent pauses, falling far, but full, 

but fine. 
Faultless friend of flowers and fountains, do I hear 

that voice of thine. 



ETTTEBPE. 141 

In tlie yellow flame of evening, sound of thee doth 

come and go 
Through the noises of the river and the drifting of 

the snoTV : 
In the yellow flame of eveniug — at the setting of the 

day- 
Sound that lightens, falls, and lightens, flickers, faints, 

and fades away. 
I am famished of thy silence — broken for the tender 

note 
Caught with its surpassing passion — caught and 

strangled in thy throat ! 
"We have nought to help thy trouble — nought for 

that which lieth mute 
On the harpstring and the lutestring and the spirit 

of the lute. 
In the yellow flame of evening sound of thee doth 

come and go 
Through the noises of the river and the drifting of 

the snow. 



Daughter of the dead red summers ! men that laugh 

and men that weep, 
Call thee Music — shall I follow, choose their name, 

and turn, and sleep ? 
"What thou art, behold, I know not ; but thy honey 

slakes and slays 



142 ETJTEEPE. 

Half the want whicli whitens manhood in the stress 

of alien days ! 
Even as a wondrous woman struck with love and 

great desire 
Hast thou been to me, Euterpe ! half of tears and 

half of fire. 
But thy joy is swift and fitful; and a subtle sense of 

pain 
Sighs through thy melodious breathing, takes the 

rapture from thy strain. 
Daughter of the dead red summers ! men that laugh 

and men that weep, 
Call thee Music — shall I follow, choose their name 

and turn, and sleep ? 



ELLEN EAT. 

A QUIET song for Ellen— 

The patient Ellen Eay, 
A dreamer in tlie nightfall, 

A watcher in the day. 
The wedded of the sailor 

Who keeps so far away : 
A shadow on his forehead 

Eor patient Ellen Eay. 

When autumn winds were driving 

Across the chafing bay, 
He said the words of anger 

That wasted Ellen Eay : 
He said the words of anger 

And went his bitter way : 
Her dower was the darkness — 

The patient Ellea Eay. 



144 ELLE]S^ EAT. 

Tour comfort is a phantom, 

My patient Ellen Eaj ; 
Ton house it in the night-time 

It fronts you in the day ; 
And when the moon is very low 

And when the lights are grey, 
You sit and hug a sorry hope, 

My patient Ellen Eay ! 

Tou sit and hug a sorry hope — 

Tet who will dare to say, 
The sweetness of October 

Is not for Ellen Eay ? 
The bearer of a burden 

Must rest at fall of day ; 
And you have borne a heavy one, 

My patient Ellen Eay. 



AT DUSK. 

At dusk, like flowers that shun the day, 

Shy thoughts from dim recesses break. 
And plead for words I dare not say 
Eor your sweet sake. 



My early love ! my first, my last ! 

Mistakes have been that both must rue, 
Eut all the passion of the past 
Survives for you. 



The tender message Hope might send, 
Sinks fainting at the lips of speech ; 
Por, are you lover — are you fi lend, 
That I would reach ? 



146 AT DTJSK. 

How mucli to-niglit I'd give to win 

A banislied peace — an old repose ! 
But here I sit, and sigli, and sin 
"When no one knows. 



The stern, the steadfast reticence 

Which made the dearest phrases halt, 
And checked a first and finest sense, 
"Was not my fault. 



I held my words because there grew 

About my life persistent pride ; 
And you were loved who never knew 
What love could hide. 



This purpose filled my soul like flame 

To win you wealth, and take the place 
Where care is not, or any shame 
To vex your face. 



I said, " till then my heart must keep 

Its secret safe and unconfest ;" 
And days and nights unknown to sleep 
The vow attest. 



AT DTJSK. 147 

Xet, O my Sweet, it seems so long 

Since you were near, and .fates retard 
The sequel of a struggle strong, 
And Life is hard ! 



Too hard when one is left alone 
To wrestle Passion, never free 
To turn and say to you, " My own, 
Come home to me." 



SATI. 

Steong pinions bore Safi, the Dreamer, 
Through the dazzle and whirl of a race ; 

And the Earth, raying up in confusion, 
Like a sea thundered under his face ! 



And the Earth raying up in confusion 
Passed flying and flying afar, 

Till it dropped like a moon into silence, 
And waned from a moon to a star. 



Was it light — was it shadow he followed 

That he swept through those desperate tracts 

With his hair beating back on his shoulders 
Like the tops of the wind-hackled flax ? 



SAPi. 149 

^' I come," murmured Safi the Dreamer, 

" I come, but thou fliest before ! 
But thy way hath the breath of the honey, 

And the. scent of the myrrh evermore." 



His eyes were the eyes of a watcher 
Held on by luxurious faith, 

And his lips were the lips of a longer 
Amazed with the beauty of Death. 



"' For ever and ever," he murmured, 
" My love for the sweetness with thee. 

Do I follow thy footsteps," said Safi, 
" Like the wind on a measureless sea. 



And, fronting the furthermost spaces, 
He kept through the distances dim. 

Till the days, and the years, and the cycles, 
"Were lost and forgotten by him. 



When he came to the silver star-portals, 
The Queen of that wonderful place 

Looked forth from her towers resplendent. 
And started, and dreamed in his face. 



150 SAFI. 

And one said, " this is Safi the Onlj, 

Wlio lived in a planet below, 
And housed him apart from his fellows, 

A million of ages ago. 

" He erred, if he suffers, to clutch at 

High lights from the wood and the street ; 

Not caring to see how his brothers 

"Were content with the things at their feet." 



But she whispered " Ah, turn to the Stranger t 

He looks like a lord of the land ; 
For his eyes are the eyes of an angel, 

And the thought on his forehead is grand I 

" Is there never a peace for the sinner 
Whose sin is in this that he mars 

The light of his worship of Beauty, 
Forgetting the flower for the stars ? '* 



" Behold him, my Sister immortal, 

And doubt that he knoweth his shame, 

"Who raves in the shadow for sweetness, 
And gloats on the ghost of a flame ! 



SAFI. 151 

" His sin is liis sin, if li6 suffers, 

"WTio wilfully straitened the Truth ; 

And his doom is his doom, if he follows 
A lie without sorrow or ruth." 



And another from uttermost verges 

Kan out with a terrible voice — 
" Let him go — it is well that he goeth 

Though he break with the lot of his choice/ 



" I come," murmured Safi the Dreamer, 
" I come, but thou fliest before ! 

But thy way hath the breath of the honey, 
And the scent of the myrrh evermore." 



"My Queen," said the first of the Voices, 
" He hunteth a perilous wraith. 

Arrayed with voluptuous fancies 
And ringed vsdth tyrannical faith. 



152 SAFI. 

" "Wound up in the heart of his error 
He must sweep through the silences dire, 

Like one in the dark of a desert 
Allured by fallacious fire." 



And she faltered, and asked, like a doubter, 
" When he hangs on those Spaces sublime 

With the Terror that knoweth no limit. 
And holdeth no record of Time, — 



*' Forgotten of God and the demons- 
Will he keep to his fancy amain ? 

Can he live for that horrible Chaos 
Of flame and perpetual rain ? " 



But an answer as soft as a prayer 
Fell down from a high hidden Land, 

And the words were the words of a language 
Which none but the gods understand. 



IN MEMORIAM. 



DANIEL HENEY DENIEHY. / 

Take the harp, but very softly for our brother touch 

the strings : 
Wind and wood shall help to wail him, waves and 

mournful mountain-springs. 
Take the harp, but very softly, for the friend who 

grew so old 
Through the hours we would not hear of — nights we 

would not fain behold ! 
Other voices, sweeter voices, shall lament him year 

by year, 
Though the morning finds us lonely, though we sit 

and marvel here : 
Marvel much while Summer cometh trammelled with 

I^ovember wheat. 



154 DANIEL HEIfET DENIEHT. 

Gold about lier forehead gleaming, green and gold 
about ber feet ; 

Tea, and wbile tbe land is dark with plover, gull,, 
and gloomy glede. 

Where tbe cold swift songs of "Winter fill tbe inter- 
lucent reed. 



Tet my barp, and O, my fatbers, never look for 

Sorrow's lay, 
Making life a migbty darkness in tbe patient noon 

of day ; 
Since be restetb wbom we loved so, out beyond 

tbese fleeting seas. 
Blowing clouds, and restless regions paved with old 

perplexities. 
In a land where thunder breaks not, in a place- 
unknown of snow, 
"Where the rain is mute for ever, where the wild 

winds never go : 
Home of far-forgotten phantoms — genii of our 

peaceful prime. 
Shining by perpetual waters past the ways of Change 

and Time : 
Haven of the harried spirit, where it folds its 

wearied wings. 
Turns its face and sleeps a sleep with deep forget- 

fulness of things. 



DANIEL HENET DENIEHT. 155- 

His should be a grave by mountains, in a cool and 

tbick-mossed lea, 
With tbe lone creek falling past it — falling ever to- 

tbe sea. 
Sis sbould be a grave by waters, by a bright and 

broad lagoon, 
Making steadfast splendours hallowed of the quiet- 
shining moon. 
There the elves of many forests — wandering winds 

and flying lights — 
Born of green, of happy mornings, dear to yellow 

summer nights, 
Tull of dole for him that loved them, then might 

halt, and then might go, 
Einding fathers of the people to their children 

speaking low — 
Speaking low of one who, failing, suffered all tha 

poet's pain, 
Dying with the dead leaves round him — ^hopes which 

never grow again. 



MEEOPE. 

Pab in the ways of the hyaline wastes — in the face 

of the splendid 
Six of the sisters — the star-dowered sisters ineffably 

bright, 
Merope sitteth, the shadow-like wife of a monarch 

unfriended 
Of Ades — of Orcus, the fierce, the implacable god 

of the night. 
Merope — fugitive Merope ! lost to thyself and thy 

lover, 
•Cast, like a dream, out of thought, with the moons 

which have passed into sleep. 
What shall avail thee? Alcyone's tears, or the 

sight to discover 
Of Sisyphus pallid for thee by the blue, bitter, lights 

of the deep ? 



MEROPE. 157 

Pallid, but patient for sorrow ? O, thou of the fire 

and the water, 
Half with the flame of the sunset and kin to the 

streams of the sea. 
Hast thou the songs of old times for desire of thy 

dark-featured daughter, 
Sweet with the lips of thy yearning, O ^thra : 

with tokens of thee ? 
Songs that would lull her, like kisses forgotten of 

silence where speech was 
Less than the "silence that bound it as Passion i» 

bound by a ban ; 
Seeing we know of thee, Mother, tve turning and 

hearing how each was 
Wrapt in the other ere Merope faltered and fell for 

a man ? 
Mortal she clave to, forgetting her birthright,. 

forgetting the lordlike 
Sons of the Many- winged Father, and chiefs of the 

plume and the star, 
Therefore, because that her sin was the grief of the 

grand and the godlike, 
Sitteth thy child than a morning-moon bleaker, the 

faded, and far. 
Einged with the flowerlike Six of the Seven, arrayed 

and anointed 
Ever with beautiful pity, she watches, she weeps, and 

she wanes. 



158 MEEOPE. 

Blind as a flame on the hills of the "Winter in hours 

appointed 
For the life of the foam and the thunder — the 

strength of the imminent rains. 
"Who hath a portion, Alcyone, like her ? Asterope, 

fairer 
Than sunset on snow, and beloved of all brightness, 

say what is there left 
Sadder and paler then Pleione's daughter disconsolate 

bearer 
Of trouble that smites like a sword of the gods to 

the break of the heft ? 
Demeter, and Dryope, known to the forests, the falls, 

and the fountains, 
Yearly, because of their walking, and wailing, and 

wringing of hands. 
Are they as one with this woman? or Hyrie wild 

in the mountains. 
Breaking her heart in the frosts and the fires of the 

uttermost lands ? 
Ihese have their bitterness. This, for Persephone, 

that, for (Echalian 
Homes, and the lights of a kindness blown out with 

the stress of her shame : 
One for her child, and one for her sin ; but thou 

above all art an alien, 
Girt with the halos that vex thee, and wrapt in a 

grief beyond name. 



MEEOPE. 159 

Yet sayetli Sisyphus — Sisyphus, stricken and chained 

of the Minioned 
Kings of great darkness, and trodden in dust by the 

feet of the fates, 
"*' Sweet are the ways of thy watching, and pallid and 

perished and pinioned. 
Moon amongst maidens, I lea,p for thy love like a 

god at the gates — 
Leap for the dreams of a rose of the heav ens, and 

beat at the portals 
Paved with the pain of unsatisfied pleadings for thee 

and for thine, 
But Zeus is immutable Master, and these are the 

walls the Immortals 
Build for our sighing, and who may set lips at the 

lords and repine ? 
Therefore," he saith, " I am sick for thee, Merope, 

faint for the tender 
Touch of thy mouth, and the eyes like the lights of 

an altar to me ; 
But lo, thou art far, and thy face is a still and 

a sorrowful splendour ! 
And the storm is abroad with the rain on the perilous 

straits of the sea." 



AFTEE THE HUNT. 

TJndeb:n'eath the windy inountaiii walls 

Eortli we rode, an eager band, 
By the surges, and the verges, and the gorges. 

Till the night was on the land — 

On the hazy, mazy land ! 
Far away the bounding prey 

Leapt across the ruts and logs, 
But we galloped, galloped, galloped on, 

TiU we heard the yapping of the dogs ! 

The yapping and the yelping of the dogs. 

Oh ! it was a madly merry day ' 

"We shall not so soon forget, 
And the edges, and the ledges, and the ridges. 

Haunt us with their echoes yet — 

Echoes, echoes, echoes yet ! 
"While the moon is on the hill 

Gleaming through the streaming fogs, 
Don't you gallop, gallop, gallop still ? 

Don't you hear the yapping of the dogs — 
The yapping and the yelping of the dogs ? 



EOSE LOEEAINE. 

Sweet water-moons, blown into lights 

Of flying gold on pool and creek, 
And many sounds, and many sights, 

Of younger days, are back this week. 
I cannot say I sought to face. 

Or greatly cared to cross again, 
The subtle spirit of the place 

Whose life is mixed with Eose Lorraine. 



What though her voice rings clearly through 

A nightly dream I gladly keep. 
No wish have I to start anew 

Heart-fountains that have ceased to leap. 
Here, face to face with different days, 

And later things that plead for love, 
It wduld be worse than wrong to raise 

A phantom far too fain to move. 



102 EOSE LOEKAIKE. 

But, Eose Lorraine — ah, Eose Lorraine, 

I'll whisper now where no one hears. 
If you should chance to meet again 

The man you kissed in soft dead years, 
Just say for once " he suffered much," 

And add to this " his fate was worst 
Because of me, my voice, my touch," — 

There is no passion like the first ! 



If I that breathe your slow sweet name 

As one breathes low notes on a flute, 
Have vext your peace with word of blame, 

The phrase is dead — the lips are mute. 
Yet when I turn towards the wall, 

In stormy nights, in times of rain, 
I often wish you could recall 

Your tender speeches, Eose Lorraine. 



Because, you see, I thought them true, 

And did not count you self-deceived. 
And gave myself in all to you. 

And looked on Lc^-e as Life achieved. 
Then came the bitter, sudden change. 

The fastened lips, the dumb despair : 
The first few weeks were very strange, 

And long, and sad, and hard to bear. 



ROSE LOBRAIKE. 163 

No woman lives with power to burst 

My passion's bonds, and set me free ; 
For Bose is last where Eose was first, 

And only Eose is fair to me. 
The faintest memory of her faee, 

The wilful face that hurt me so, 
Is followed by a fiery trace 

That Eose Lorraine must never know. 



I keep a faded ribbon string 

You used to wear about your throat ; 
And of this pale, this perished thing, 

I think I know the threads by rote. 
God help such love ! To touch your hand, 

To loiter where your feet might fall, 
You marvellous girl, my soul would stand 

The worst of hell — its fires and all ! 



THE END. 



\Val5£E2, Mat and Co., PjiiMEts, 99 Bocbkk SxhaEI Tfaax. 



